Origins of Symmetry
by Ryuujitsu
Summary: In which Ryou is an intergalactic super-spy, and Bakura is his next target. Tendershipping. Updates at the pace of a zombie snail.
1. 00

origins of symmetry  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…

A/N: This is basically a story about the YGO cast romping about the universe. Plus giant robots. Plus snogging. And loneliness and isolation and slow creeping sadness and finding your place and your counterpart in the vastness of space, too. M for language, violence, and other mature situations! Other warnings: Appalling science. I am no physicist.

Suggestions for reading: If you have a Muse album or two, put them on!

_Far away; this ship is taking me far away  
__Far away from the memories of the people who care if I live or die_

-Muse, "Starlight"

00. Ryou guides the ship with a single cold hand. The other is being squeezed between his thighs for warmth. He tugs at the wheel and the ancient Ki-97 Toryu swings gently port, over the first of the evening's lights glowing in the apartments of the valley. The Kado River cuts through the center of the sphere like a strip of thick black velvet. The external mirrors of Colony YG0 have pulled back to allow for nightfall—later than is usual, to simulate the lengthening of days. Endless stars rise beyond the glass panels.

He docks with little trouble at North Bay, tethers the Toryu, and takes the seven-thirty shuttle into Domino City.

01. YG0, like many of its inhabitants, is old—going on ninety. At sundown the birds erupt out of the trees—because they can feel the rattling of the glass and the creaking of the mirror panels, the subtle shifts in air pressure, it is said. It's true that the air is staler, and that the ground shivers at times. But the wheels and gears are not grinding to a halt: Upsilon Gamma Zero will not wind down for another five hundred years. By then it will have been abandoned; rendered obsolete, a decrepit fueling station if it is to be anything at all, its inhabitants moved on to bigger and better things: the Z and Alpha cylinders. There is a new Alpha in the Yunnan system, a city of millions.

Domino, by contrast, is a city of thousands—eleven thousand, if the latest census is to be believed. There have been few births. The city elders were babies when the ships took them to the outer circle of glistening, new, uninhabited colonies. Now, most parents and grandparents are long dead. And even the children have dwindled.

It is a lonely colony. The closest of its brethren, the smaller YT3, lies seven days away by fastest ship or suit. Ryou, the transporter, former pilot, has done the distance in five.

02. The interior of Domino City's Number Three curry joint is brightly lit, the walls sponged yellow. Business is steady and always good on weekends. Monday through Sunday, Honda Hiroto's high school friends drift in and out, joining the other regulars at the counter. On Saturday nights, though, they take a booth by the window, and stay forever, sometimes until morning, and Honda brings the beers and sits down beside them. It has been a weekly tradition since before the war, and tonight Ryou is late.

The others are already there, gathered around an empty hotpot: Mutou Yuugi, with his little legs dangling, at one side beside Honda; Jounouchi Katsuya, mechanic, and Mazaki Anzu, dancer, at the other.

Jounouchi is in the middle of some uproariously funny joke, Anzu and Honda enthralled, cheesy enka throbbing through shoddy old speakers; only Yuugi looks up at the sound of the bell. He smiles—gently—everything about Yuugi is gentle—and waves Ryou over.

Jounouchi breaks off. "Look who's back in town!"

"Ehm," Ryou tries, "it's a bit, ah, hang on—" He flounders a minute, looking for an empty chair to pull up and finding none.

"Oh, sit down," Anzu says, laughing, and she hooks her arm around his and drags him down beside her. "We're all friends here; we can stand being a little squashed—"

"Meat!" Honda shouts at the kitchen. _Okay, boss,_ the kitchen shouts back. Honda slides a fifth beer across the table, grinning, and Ryou doesn't register the movement immediately, almost lets it tip before he catches it.

"Welcome back, Ryou-kun," Yuugi says seriously.

"Mm, yeah, welcome back, and feel free to squash us some more," Jounouchi says. "Hope you showered—"

"Fresh as a daisy," Anzu declares, her nose sudden and cold against the nape of Ryou's neck.

"I always smell nice," Ryou says_, it's, erm, pear, actually, _lamely, but Jounouchi leans in and talks over him:

"So, she's got this Shadow Ghoul model named _Teddy_ of all the goddamned things, never lets me near it, but she's all over Yuugi, and I think he _likes_ it—"

"Wh—hey, she's just a kid!" Yuugi protests.

"Oh, Ryou, you have to listen to this," Anzu says. "Yuugi's been unfaithful, apparently—start over, Jounouchi-kun. He has to hear it from the beginning."

Jounouchi starts over, flapping his hands. Ryou passes the beer bottle from one hand to the other, smiling at appropriate moments, and takes a good long look at all of them. Every time he comes back to Domino he is shocked by their faces—eyes and noses and chins stranger, harder, wider, never quite in line with his memory of them.

Honda and Jounouchi are a pair, eternally scruffy, apron and jacket slick and stained with vegetable and engine oil. Under the dirt and the ugly Medusa-knot of scars, the skin of Jounouchi's face is tanned: when he's not at Yuugi's shop, he's at the southern pole scouting new customers, catching the brunt of the sunlight. Everything about him is warm and boisterous, open; he's spread out, long and lean, legs splayed, practically in Anzu's lap. Ryou imagines civilian life is doing him good. The Jounouchi of five years ago was a stray, snarling and snapping at anyone who got close enough to be bitten.

Yuugi has done a better job cleaning himself up—he's even wearing clean pants, though there is still a smear of grease on his chin. Spare keys to his grandfather's shop dangle around his neck. He has not grown taller, but his face has sharpened, the schoolboy softness finally leaving his cheeks. By all accounts, Yuugi's adolescence was painful, gawky, porn- and pimple-filled, and only recently past, but to Ryou, Yuugi has always seemed wiser than his years. Since the war there has been a sadness in Yuugi, too—something that lingers quiet and solemn. They have all noticed it, and it discomfits them, as much as Yuugi tries to hide it.

Anzu's hair is longer, and her face is rounder, smiling rosily. The engagement ring twinkles as she passes Ryou a bowl and chopsticks. It has been eight months since Yuugi proposed on the riverbank, twelve months since Ryou brought the small milky stone from Gamma Seven, a real pink seed pearl, no larger than a sliver of fingernail—

_"Must be nice," Anzu says. "Seeing the stars up close and personal—walking downtown in a big city!" She laughs. "I guess you don't see shows when you're on the job, though."_

_Ryou smiles and says nothing. Anzu is wearing soft pinks and yellows and has a little charm bracelet on her left wrist—dangling silver ballet shoes. Thirty-six times she's danced on the Domino Civic stage. In a year, she will have had forty recitals on that little wooden platform, and then she will retire._

_"Must be nice," Anzu repeats, and sighs a bit, and fiddles with her straw. The pearl glows on her finger._

—The new plate arrives, heavy and cold, red and green with beef and cabbage. They watch the boiling pot in silence; then Jounouchi and Honda lunge.

"Pig!" Honda says, subsiding.

"Harrup—harrup, you," says Jounouchi thickly, cabbage trailing limply down his chin. He manages to swallow, although it's a near thing, and finish his story about Yuugi's bratty blonde stalkerette, casting about with enormous sweeping motions that knock the napkin dispenser off the table. Anzu collapses into folded arms. "I can't breathe," she says; Yuugi pats her arm with a besotted smile.

The biggest news in the quadrant—the unrepentantly corrupt Jinrai Hattori finally taken into custody, denounced by colony and coalition alike: eighty billion yuan embezzled. Ryou nods. He remembers hearing about it, drifting in and out of sleep with the Toryu on autopilot, en route to Yunfeng.

Honda cuts in before Jounouchi can begin another story. "I heard from old Arthur a few days ago," he says. "Remember that huge explosion on Gamma-gamma-twenty—killed some minor treasury official? It's official: Bakura was behind it."

"Took them long enough," Jounouchi says, incredulous. "Who the hell else could have done it?"

Bakura is a faceless specter to most, but for the past three years he has been a suspect behind every attack and assassination across the Alliance. YG0 in its quiet pocket of space is in little danger, but elsewhere across the universe the heads of state tremble and double their guard. During a six-month lull it was thought he had been killed, but last January the attacks resumed, growing in frequency—always singular assassinations, always at the edge of Allied territory, always creeping inward.

Bakura's motives are totally unknown. The analysts have made him out to be a Marxist, a socialist, an anarchist, a fascist, a fundamentalist, a separatist, a communist, a terrorist, a torusist, a pirate, an anti-colonist—at the very least, a madman.

"I think I've met him, actually," Ryou says.

There is a pause.

"_What?_" Anzu and Yuugi exclaim, almost in unison. Anzu goes on. "_How_? No way!"

Jounouchi laughs. "No, definitely no way," he says. "I can't believe that."

Ryou shrugs. He says, mildly, "I think I shot him down—during the war. You know." He toys with his bowl and waits for them to chuckle and move on, _ha ha, very funny, Ryou—_

Anzu and Honda are looking at him, almost warily. Jounouchi's laughter has taken on a nervous tinge. "Shit, man," he says, wide-eyed. "Every time I see you, you're so sweet and quiet. I forget what a scary fucker you really are."

Yuugi laughs, soft, and everyone relaxes. "Come on, Jounouchi-kun—remember that time in the locker room—"

"Oh, stars, yeah," Jounouchi says, slapping the table. "He shot the _wall_ between—friggin' _singed_ Johnny's—uh—bet Johnny still keeps his legs crossed!"

"It was an amazing shot," Yuugi says. "I can't forget the look on his face."

"It was a good shot," Ryou agrees. Easier than it should have been. He remembers the cold blasting his face, the sweat soaking his uniform. Two savage eyes behind the visor of an antique Diabound—

It was two years ago, on Goryo, deep in the slums, four years since the war—

_—The alleyway stinks of fish._

_"What the fuck do you mean, you don't remember?"_

_Mai is inside a low-roofed weapons storage, raising hell. Ryou can hear things smashing—Mai shouting, the owner's voice climbing in a buzzing whine. It's only their third run together, but he sees the wisdom of the pairing. Mai "Bloody" Valentine is all tumbling sunshine curls and sweet perfume and slick purple leather—but she's the Iron Bitch for a reason. Recalcitrants beware: retired Second Lieutenant Mai shoots for the kneecaps._

_The contact has begun to wail when Ryou notices him—red jacket slung over his shoulder, young and lean and hobbling like octogenarian down the street, his head covered._

_A nervous thrill goes up Ryou's back. The man falters at the mouth of the alley, and Ryou is beside him at once, propping him up._

_"You limp," he observes._

_Suddenly there is a knife pressing against his side, the cold of the blade radiating through his T-shirt, sharp between his ribs._

_Cold and easy, Bakura says, "Shot down during the war; leg's never been the same. Still piloting?"_

_Ryou swallows hard. "Civilian now," he lies. His heart is fluttering between his ribs like a bird in a cage. If the knife turns and slides, he knows it will puncture a lung. He will be dead long before Mai comes back. He imagines falling into the salt dust, gasping his last with Bakura's foot on his face, Bakura's heel grinding into his cheek._

_He can't move his arms. Bakura has him pinned against the mud brick of the alley wall._

Let me go_, Ryou tries to say. "I thought I killed you," he says instead. His voice is shaking. He tries to smile._

_Bakura grins, dark and savage, more than a little mad. "I'll never die," he says. The knife slips up, a slow horrible arc, and comes to press against Ryou's jugular. It is blunt. The edge has been warmed by his body. The hand that holds it—Bakura's hand—is hot and dry, burning against Ryou's throat._

I didn't miss! _Ryou thinks, hysterically. He should be dead. He should be—_

_Ryou swallows again, with a click. "Don't," he says finally. "Let me go. You'll regret it if—"_

_Bakura gives a bark of laughter, drowning him out, and then he leans forward and kisses Ryou, black eyes lidded, mouth wide as though to swallow him, pressing so close Ryou feels smothered._

_"Give me a reason to regret it," Bakura says, low, and Ryou cries out as the knife draws a thin burning line across his breastbone._

_"The war minister," Ryou gasps. He can barely breathe. "The war minister is expecting you. They've tripled the guard and installed a look-alike—unnh, oh God—"_

_Bakura straightens with deliberate care, licking the last drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Civilian my ass," he says, and then he is gone._

_Ryou sags against the wall, frazzled and boneless. The knife lies in the dust at his feet._

—Jounouchi takes the last piece of meat. "So you're heading out again soon, I guess? Probably, huh?"

Ryou starts. "Oh—Saturday—next Saturday."

"So we can keep you a few more days," Yuugi says, smiling. The alcohol has turned him bright red. "You should stop by the shop sometime, Ryou-kun. Grandpa misses you; he's always asking, you know, 'Where did that Ryou fellow get off to? What a sweet, polite boy,' and so on."

Jounouchi chuckles. "Sweet boy? This guy is a killer! Mr. Ace _Pilot_!"

"I wanted to talk to Sugoroku-san," Ryou says slowly. "Do you need a delivery boy? I'm thinking of quitting my job."

General exclamations around the table.

"Why?" Yuugi says. "I thought you really liked your job, Ryou-kun—"

Ryou and Yuugi were colony babies—some of the first. They knew each other vaguely at Domino _chuugakkou_, but true acquaintance began in pilot training. They slept in the same corridor, flew in the same squadron, together always until a skirmish in the last month of the war, where Yuugi's back was broken and Jounouchi blinded in one eye trying to protect him. Yuugi's grandfather was quick to hire them—_shanghaied us, more like, pervy old man,_ Jounouchi grouses each time, but cheerfully. _Yes, Grandpa,_ Yuugi never fails to add, _we're very grateful._

The Turtle Shop sits by the river. At surface-level it is a basic repair shop; smaller ships are upgraded, parts replaced. Mutou Sugoroku, retired pilot and mechanic, builder and repairer of suits, keeps his renovated suits in a cavernous basement—the 2029 Cyclops, the 2044 Koumori, the ancient 1914 Kaiser. Sleeping giants.

—"It's tiring," Ryou says. He avoids Yuugi's eyes.

"Getting old, huh?" Jounouchi says, with a sympathetic nod. "I understand. My head's the same way. Hurts when the comets go by."

"God and Buddha, take better care of yourselves," Anzu admonishes. "You're only in your twenties!"

"Well, that's what happens, when you pilot," Jounouchi says. "Body can't take the stress. We're all breaking down! I'll tell you what, Anzu-chan, you'd better go for Honda. He's the real spring chicken, out of all of us—"

"Oh, _no_!" Anzu says, laughing again. "I wouldn't. Never."

"Hey," Honda says. "I'm hurt. What does Yuugi have that I don't have, huh? Is he radioactive?"

Jounouchi leers. "Radioactive _in bed_!"

Yuugi exclaims and socks him in the shoulder. "You big doofus—listen, Honda-kun, I am _eighteen times_ the man you will ever be. _And_ I'm radioactive. _And_ I glow in the dark. In bed. _And_—"

He ends up on the table, pounding his chest with a fist. Anzu has buried her head in Jou's shoulder, really crying with laughter, and Honda is bent double, howling. It was a long, sleepless flight and Ryou is tired now, tired to his bones, but they are so bright and alive he can't help staying, watching them.

It is nine-past-one—nearly curfew—when he gets up to go.

"Well," Jounouchi says, shuffling awkwardly, "have a good trip."

"Thanks," Ryou says. He feels distant, oddly wobbly—he flashes back to the interior of the Toryu's cockpit, recalls the humming of the seat beneath him and sees his water canteen jammed in between the seat cushions. Too late to go back for it now.

"Take care of yourself," Anzu says; "See you," says Honda, and "Come by anytime. Drinks on the house."

"Thanks," Ryou says again.

"Listen," Yuugi says, with another of his penetrating stares, "don't disappear without saying goodbye. Have dinner with us on Wednesday—my place, seven o'clock. I'll mention it to Grandpa—what you said."

Ryou looks past him, over him. "Yeah, Yuugi-kun," he says swiftly, and "Thanks," a third time. "Best of luck," he says to all of them. "See you later."

Except for Yuugi, they have turned back to each other, Honda about to say something. Ryou slips toward the door.

Jounouchi's voice stalls him. "You'll be back for the wedding, right, Ryou?"

"I think so," Ryou says, after a moment, and he walks out into the cool March night.

03. Ryou cashes a paycheck and spends most of the week using it up. Thicker sweaters are on the agenda. It is always too cold in space.

In the mornings he goes for a run—eight kilometers, slow and easy, following the river to the clock tower and back. He weaves around stationary objects, jogging leisurely circles around lampposts, and slips languidly between moving ones, brushing shirt sleeves and long unbound hair. Everything is perfectly in order, his arms and legs pumping with smooth, glossy movement. The growing pain of each breath keeps him from floating away.

Wednesday evening, at seven o'clock, he calls headquarters and goes to bed early. Thursday he reads files, from noon to midnight, and reviews the flight plans.

Friday afternoon finds him standing by his family's grave plot, wondering what there is to say. It's five p.m. and the mirror panels have yet to pull back. The Kado River murmurs in the background, golden in the sunlight.

The cemetery is quiet and deserted, sloping down gently toward the river. There are only two hundred or so marked graves, for the dead colonizers and their children, the first generation—no bodies, only ash. Domino Temple prays for those who have been lost in space, that their orbiting bodies may find peace.

Since the war, it is not unusual to come across a "dead suit." Sometimes parts are salvaged. More often they are left alone.

Ryou's father is probably among these, orbiting some star in the dead silence of space, if his suit hasn't fallen into the atmosphere and burned away. It has been nineteen years since he broke formation and vanished into the Deva system, his trail swallowed up by gas clouds.

The official colony register lists the names and dates: birth, death, missing in action, presumed dead. Mother-Sister-Father. In the cemetery, though, there is only the rounded stele overwhelmed by the larger granite monuments to its left and right, cut stone inscribed with red ink: _INOUE._

The _ue_ is fading, and Ryou traces a finger through the grooves in the stone. The incense smolders in its plate, sweet and smoky.

_Well, Amane-chan—  
__Well, Yuugi-kun will need a wedding present._

And: _Must speak to Brigadier Ishtal before I leave—_

"I thought I'd find you here."

—_ah._

"Yuugi-kun," he greets, without turning. Artificial rain has left the grass damp and soft; Yuugi's footfalls barely register as he comes closer. "How are you?"

"You didn't come to dinner."

"Ah—no. I'm sorry—" He adds something about the Toryu's engine, a checkup, a meeting—Wednesday night, and _You know how HQ is._

Somewhat reproachfully: "Grandpa and I could have done that for you, you know."

"I know," Ryou says. "I'm sorry—really. It slipped my mind. . ."

"I feel like—" and Yuugi sits down, folding in on himself, staring out over the river "—I feel like one day you're just going to vanish." He's still in his work clothes, tattered T-shirt and jeans and the ever-present garage keys. "I always felt that."

"Yuugi-k. . ."

Yuugi goes on: "You know—the war chewed me up. I'll never be the same. But I can't say it touched you. You were always so. . ."

"Calm?" Ryou smiles. "Well—"

_The physician's assistant has dropped her clipboard. Ryou stares at her. Six hours after the raid, and his hands have finally stopped shaking. He feels fine—not even tired. Nothing can possibly be wrong._

_Major Ishtal materializes, presses something cold and flimsy into his right palm. "Corporal."_

_Compact mirror. Ryou flips it open and looks, and then he snaps it shut and hands it back. He smiles; something creaks. "Major, there's something wrong with your mirror."_

_"Nothing wrong with my mirror, Corporal: you're bleeding."_

_"Just a scratch. Grazed my skull. The rest is—" Nosaka's._

Here they come! _Nosaka screams. Ryou remembers taking aim. He does not remember firing. What he does remember: running like hell and the pain of every inhalation and the intoxicating joy of takeoff, the faint warmth and the burning blood on his face—and the cold: the marvelous, empty cold of space, nothing but the titanium of his suit holding back the stars, holding him together against the brilliant fireball in the blackness—Mission accomplished, Nosaka!_

_"It's all yours, Corporal," Ishtal tells him. "Every last drop."_

_"Ah," Ryou says succinctly, stupidly. Of course it can't be Nosaka's. Nosaka is dead. He feels the tremors in his fingers again. He squeezes his hands between his thighs. "But I'm all right, Major."_

—"Detached," Yuugi says, frowning up at him. The red in his hair glints in the sun. "It was like you weren't even there. But for the rest of us, the war—"

"I was scared," Ryou says, low. "I was scared out of my mind."

Yuugi flushes. "Sorry. That's not what I meant. It's just—how can I say it?—I feel like I'm still fighting to reach you, sometimes."

"I'm right here, Yuugi-kun," Ryou says finally.

Ten minutes pass before Yuugi jumps and snatches at his bag, rifling through it. "I forgot," he says, upending the whole satchel into the grass—wrenches, a pocketbook, greasecloths, several lumpy paper packets. "Really am getting old. Sandwiches—from Grandpa. Have you eaten? 'M starving."

Mutou Sugoroku is a total eccentric. Ryou takes a sandwich—thick with lettuce, and only lettuce—and turns it in his hands, staring at it.

Yuugi, about to bite, grins, sheepish. "He forgets the bread, too, sometimes."

Sugoroku has never had anything good to say about Ryou's father, who left behind a dying wife and daughter when he went to find Earth—

Maybe, Ryou suggests, he thought Earth could cure them.

_Then he should have taken them along, the damned lugnut_, Sugoroku grumbles, and Yuugi shushes him, apologetically. _Grandpa._

—They eat as they walk from the cemetery, and Ryou gripes, among other things, about the Toryu's heater. Nothing wrong with the navigation, he says; it runs as smooth as a cylinder colony, but it gets so _bloody_ cold.

Yuugi does not have a very helpful diagnosis. "I'd have to see it," he says, and laughs. "It's probably getting old, like me."

"Say," Yuugi says, as they come to the footbridge over Kado River, "there's still time tonight. Bring it to the shop—Grandpa and I can have a look."

"I'm taking a newer model out tomorrow, anyway," Ryou says, maybe too quickly, and Yuugi's smile goes flat. _Shit. _"Er—"

"Well, all right," Yuugi says, looking away. "Next time, then."

04. 0300 GMT Saturday, Ryou pulls out of South Bay. The KaibaCorp Minotaur feels weird under him: so small and light, practically a shell.

He gets his first glimpse of Baek two hundred and twenty-eight hours later, nose dripping and feet numb. It is no bigger than a two-yuan star chip, nearly blotted out by the light from its closest star, Šilla, and looks as though it could fit easily in the palm of his hand. The atmosphere is thin; as he gets nearer he sees every detail of the cloudless, mottled surface—rich yellows and barren whites, speckled with oases. A desert planet no larger than a Bernal colony, with all of three precious rivers running across its surface: Baek, planet of the white dunes. Ryou can see the gray of the cities as he prepares for entry, clustered about those thin dark lines of blue. A monarchy grown from the wreckage of a colonial ship flying off course—an ancient world, civilization restarted.

The landing is unexpectedly rough, and he comes into the dock bruised and shaken. He pulls off his sweater and climbs out of the cockpit into dry desert heat, wondering at his trembling hands.

Baek is a riot of sound and light. A bazaar, overgrown, deafeningly loud, seeps into the dock grounds. A Maltese cat lazes beside a stall of fine ceramic ware; a young woman in filmy linens reaches out to examine a golden chain, her voice shrill. Merchants and patrons hung with clattering bangles and beads haggle viciously in a guttural Baekan dialect. Pottery is kicked and broken; a minor brawl erupts.

There is no one waiting to greet him. Ryou lingers fifteen minutes, rubbing sand from his eyes, and finally sets off alone, drawing his sweater up over his nose and mouth.

The package is a fat square of titanium, small enough and light enough to be carried with one hand. At most he expects precious stones, family keepsakes—nothing politically important enough to warrant a request for the protection of the Alliance.

All the same, he takes stock of his items: the package, the sweater, the Leogun in his belt, the knife at his thigh—

The scars on his chest are pale and pearly, forming a neat circle. Clothed, he does not remember them. But wiping the steam from the mirror in the mornings—in curling, nonsensical, finger-drawn patterns—he notices them anew and recalls the hot press of Bakura's mouth, the suction, the sting.

He does not try to suppress the memory. But his gun is always loaded. It will not happen again.

—The Bit-Atem, the House, the great palace of Baek, rises into view beyond a thick and towering mud-brick wall. One courtyard widens into another, the path surrounded by jeweled trees and segmented by huge, impressive gates, each glazed blue and emblazoned with golden lions, crocodiles, demonic birds. At every gate there stands a guard, and there are twelve guards in all—one, Ryou thinks, for each heavenly guardian in the pantheon. He gives his name, states his business, and clears the security checks without trouble.

It is at the entrance to the court where the confusion begins.

"My lord," the herald says, firmly, "that cannot be right. I have announced already an emissary of the great empire, some hours earlier. The Sun has deigned to speak with him. He kneels within."

"I arrived at the time that was agreed upon," Ryou says. "Am I to understand—"

"There cannot be two," the herald insists. "He was properly met and escorted. I have announced him."

"You've made a mistake," Ryou says. He produces his identification and the titanium package, one in each hand. "Did the previous emissary carry these?"

"No," the herald says, bewildered; "the card, yes, but he had something larger, a case—"

Adrenaline begins to flow.

"You've let in the wrong man," Ryou says. "It's dangerous. You've endangered the king."

The man's face drains of blood. He says something in Baekan; Ryou understands it to mean _Liar_.

"I'm not lying," Ryou says. "Please! You've got to let me in."

"No weapons—" The herald makes a half-hearted attempt to restrain him. Ryou slips past, puts both hands on the door and waits to be tackled. When nothing happens, he pushes.

The walls are lined with guards. The spears they hold are golden, ceremonial, wholly ineffective. Five people take center stage: a lithe young man enthroned, the triple crown of Baek on his head; the two men and a woman beside him in shining robes; and the long, lean shape bowing before them on the cool glazed brick. Ryou's breath comes to a rasping halt in his throat. He can't move; he can't speak. He sees, very clearly, Bakura's dark hand slipping into the case, closing around the gun inside.

"_Šilla_," the herald shouts from behind him, "_dur-šarrukin_—"

The king rises to his feet; his viziers step forward—

"_B—_" Ryou can't draw the breath to shout. He reaches for the Leogun and the herald barrels into him from behind, seizing him around the waist and dragging him bodily backward.

Bakura's arm sweeps out in a silver arc, blurring. Too late, Ryou follows the trajectory and _realizes_—

The shot shakes the inner court like an explosion and sprays the king with gore; one of the two male viziers reels back and crumples. The entry wound is small, a neat hole in the forehead, but Ryou knows the back of his head has been blown away. The blood pools and trickles.

Commotion.

The king is on his knees, cradling the body, wailing; the woman vizier whirls, screaming orders. None of it matters: Bakura is coming toward him. Ryou has cocked his gun, has his finger on the trigger—the shot goes wild as the herald knees him in the back and brings a hand crashing down on his wrist. The Leogun discharges again as it flies out of his hands.

Bakura is getting away.

The herald is aiming another chop. Ryou gets him around the neck and slams his head into the great golden door—once, twice.

"Your suits," he says. His voice sounds strange in his ears, tinny and breathless. "_Where are your suits?_"

05. They talk about finding Earth, late at night on the space station, polishing up their suits, running the soft cloth over the titanium until it gleams—staring out into the stars and the vague fog of the Deva system spinning in the East.

They talk about the stars they could see on home colonies, the planets. The memory of Earth—that bleak destroyed place—lingers. It's been light years and the universe is only getting bigger, but no one can forget.

They trade theories: There was never an Earth, only a collective memory, a myth. Earth has been swallowed up by the old sun. Or—there was no holocaust; there are still humans on Earth, going about their lives. Jounouchi is in favor of dragons—that draws some laughter. But the favorite among the cadets is that the Earth is empty but growing anew. Silence as they consider it; then smiling agreement. They are children who have grown up in planned cities, among machinery and titanium and concrete, who put themselves into suits to die for mining belts. Yes: the Earth is blue and green, teeming with vines, every plant they can remember or have read about or can imagine—mountains, valleys, undersea trenches. Coral and jungles and the little green leaves in the spring, baby-soft—real seasons, the pleasant heat of summer on Earth.

Ryou thinks of the cities, the people who couldn't make it out in time. By now there are not even ashes.

The Baek suit—there is only one, glimmering faintly on its golden throne—is not an antique but an archaeological artifact. Ryou catches himself hissing with frustration as he checks the controls—all manual, a giant mechanical sock puppet. The pilot restraints have rotted away. He's never seen a model like this, but he can recognize the bulging reactor behind the pilot-seat, huge and inefficient, the complete lack of any flight mechanism. It is exactly the sort of machine Yuugi's grandfather would give up a leg to restore—a bloody _museum piece_.

But it works. Ryou flips the switches, and the reactor comes to life with a deep, rich vibration. The cockpit glows red and hot. He wrenches the controls and powers it forward, one foot after the other.

The guards are sprinting across the courtyards, light ricocheting wildly across the steel of their ancient guns. They scatter when they see the suit—some throw themselves down, thinking their king stands before them, has come to fight for them.

Ryou clatters by: left, right—

_Left, right. The training dome dwarfs his suit. Ryou flexes his fingers around the controls and takes another step. His heart is somewhere in his throat, shaking his body with every beat. On the other side of the line Yuugi raises his hand, giant and steel-plated, in mock salute._

—"_Bakura!_"—

_"Nice and easy, Mr. Inoue, Mr. Mutou!"_

_Yuugi yells, high-pitched and hilarious, and Ryou thinks of Yuugi's little body, floating and lit with the green light of the controls—a glancing blow like a brush of the fingers, and Ryou waddles forward—_

—The Necrofear pivots with a grace that makes him ache. Sunlight flares off the blackened vambraces, and then the machine is running at him, shaking the ground. Bakura howls, and the sound of it tears upward from the depths of the cavernous chest, hollow and inhuman: screaming wind. Ryou brings his arm up just in time to block the first wild swing. The impact rattles his teeth; he digs in his heels and the Baek suit, miraculously, finds foothold in the sand, stops skidding.

"Bakura—"

Bakura screams again and brings the left arm of the Necrofear crashing down, and now Ryou has both arms over his head, bracing. The Baek suit is being pushed into the ground—

"I think I shot him down. . ."

_Like hell!_

—Almost on his knees. Any lower and Bakura will have free access to the back of his neck—

Like hell anyone could shoot Bakura down!

Ryou drops his arms—_Come on come on yes!_—and the Baek suit rolls left—and the ground ruptures where the Necrofear's shining black foot hits it. Sand floods Ryou's helmet in thick, hot, dusty clouds. No time to lie there choking—he rolls again and again, all the while blinking and fumbling for the guns—God in heaven there _are_ no guns—nothing but his two slow meaty hands and an antique fucking ornamental _sword_—

_"Harder, Mr. Inoue; this isn't a tea party; we are not shaking hands—"_

—Mostly gold, and all two meters of it _sing_ and warp as Ryou smashes it into the Necrofear's legs, once, twice, shearing the blackened plates away—just enough of a pause to lurch to his feet, and then they are grappling, enormous metal fingers locked. Bakura's hand on his wrist—_tight_—he can feel the bolts popping—makes it impossible to swing again.

He has to disable to Necrofear's flight mechanism somehow—the reactor, even, if he's lucky—has to get the Baek suit's hand to the back of the Necrofear's neck, deep into the wires—pluck them like harpstrings, delicately, just-so—no better sound than the wet electric squeal of dying machinery, but he can't quite _reach_—

The Necrofear dances nimbly back, the gadfly to the Baek suit's brooding and ponderous weight, like Bakura isn't piloting a two-tonne pile of metal and circuitry, like it's just Bakura, flying at him, larger than life. Ryou spits sand, shifts his weight, and drives the hilt of the sword into Bakura's side with a shout—

He's hyper aware: of the rubbery quality of the controls beneath his hands, the relentless heat of the day and the oily smell of the machine and the reactor like a lit fire under his legs, the grit and the sweat burning in his eyes, the heartbeat of weightlessness as Bakura belts the Baek suit across the faceplate and the sharp, spicy copper of the blood—_his _blood—every sense overwhelmed before it all contracts, hurtling to a single white point: the clean, musical crack as the bones of his right arm snap and his own startled exhalation—a sigh, really—

Bakura hits the Baek suit again and Ryou topples from his seat, tumbling into the left leg socket—broken wire mesh scores his face, draws hot lines across his shoulders—jarring impact, the leg control pedal striking his back like a kick to the ribs—

Blackness recedes: Bakura is pawing at the Baek suit, oddly clumsy, trying to crush the bevor. The metal crumples like gold-leaf under the assault—

_Wide open, Mr. Inoue!_

Wide open—do anything—duck run crawl _move_—_Stop him!_

He feels the weight of the Necrofear, insubstantial, flimsy, and shoves the control pedal with arm and foot, bracing his throbbing back against the hot metal plates of the leg socket—the knee of the Baek suit swings up and up and crashes into the Necrofear—again—_again_—

The shriek of metal rending metal, and Bakura reels back—

Ryou presses his cheek into the side of the socket and kicks with his legs, fighting his way up with his left elbow, scrabbling for the controls, which are wet, slippery with sweat and blood and oil—the faceplate is bent to hell and there is sand everywhere, grinding down the gears, clogging his throat. He can't see Bakura; he can't see anything—

A buzzing whine in his ears, in his ribcage—uncomfortable heat—the beginnings of burns on his calves—

_The reactor!_

"No," Ryou says, thickly, "no, no—_fuck_—"

The controls scorch his hand, his face. He gropes for the release switch and the battered faceplate falls away, to shouts of alarm on the ground. Molten sunlight floods the chest cavity; sand and waves of red heat billow inward. The Necrofear is a glimmering black dot as it disappears into the atmosphere.

_Bakura is getting away_.

He loses his footing as he climbs from the cockpit, right arm dangling uselessly. The air is icy as it streams across his face. It is possible he screams when he hits the ground, sucking blood and dirt into his mouth—

The jagged edges of bone sparkle absurdly—

—but soon enough it all goes white.


	2. 01

origins of symmetry  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…

06. _In the last months of conflict the war progresses like tar, boiling slow and hot, skirmishes infrequent but bloody. The peace treaties are being drafted and discarded, but ceasefire is coming._

_Four weeks before it all ends, Ryou is alone in the hangar, making minor adjustments to his suit controls. He has just disconnected from a videophone call with the medical bay and Jounouchi, who is up and about already, debonair with one eye obscured by bandages and jovially concerned about Ryou's post-war prospects. He can ship home anytime, but he is waiting for Yuugi._

_"Corporal." Polished black boots gleam in the starlight. Major—no, Brigadier Ishtal._

_Ryou gives a smart salute. "Brigadier!"_

_"Put away those pliers and get down here," Ishtal says, and waits until he has slipped down from the cockpit, but only just._

_Briskly: "I heard about that maneuver of yours at Durga Nine. Very impressive—"_

_Ryou blinks. "Thank you, Briga—"_

_"—daring, and stupid. I must confess myself pleasantly surprised, Corporal. It had never occurred to me that you might be mad."_

_"Thank you, Brigadier," Ryou says carefully, "I think."_

_"I appreciate a slight penchant for deranged antics in all my officers." A sharp smile. "I understand that you are alone. Unattached, as it were."_

_"Yes," Ryou says. He has an idea of where this is going—Ishtal's background isn't exactly a coalition secret—and he's heard things—_

_Black ops, are the whispers. Saboteur._

_"Inoue," Ishtal says, quiet, "this war may be ending, but there will be others—wars with more than shiny space rocks at stake—"_

Assassin_._

_"Brigadier," Ryou begins, I'm not sure—and swallows, suddenly dry-mouthed._

_"Balance must be maintained," she says, and looks at him, blue eyes bright and keen in the shadow of the KaibaCorp suits, taking in every twitch of his mouth and fingers. "I think you understand."_

_"Yes," Ryou says simply; he understands perfectly._

The room is dark, smelling of charred earth. His throat burns like he's been drinking sand. His face throbs; his bound legs itch, abominably; it feels like the skin has been flayed from the backs of his calves. His right arm has been expertly set and splinted. He's been here long enough that the bones have begun to knit, but the angle is—wrong.

Blood drips from his nose and collects between his lips.

"Are you the man who calls himself Bakura?"

_ No, I am not_, Ryou should say, two parts baffled, slightly indignant; that is the natural answer. They have yet to accept this as truth, but another earnest denial shouldn't hurt—much. _No, I am the man who calls himself Inoue fucking Ryou_ will earn him another thrashing—his jailors will surely resent the tone, whether or not they recognize the next question will be _Then who are you_?—to which there are so many responses and of which _Well, who are _you_?_ will get his other arm broken.

"When I ask," the young male vizier says (_When Šilla's man speaks_, Ryou parses numbly), "you answer," (literally: _everything in your heart you will let spill forth like water_) and slaps Ryou, sharper this time, palm open and taut.

The vizier has never been gentle, but he usually leaves the more physical aspects of interrogation to his attendants. Today there is only the vizier, and behind him, quiet and still, is _Šilla_ himself: the boy-king of Baek. Ryou feels sweaty terror—he's not made of ice, after all, and it must look very suspicious indeed: a high official murdered in cold blood, the imperial courtyards laid to waste, giant golden cult objects melted, and one white-haired pilot indistinguishable from another—a series of very unfortunate and nasty coincidences. He is weaponless, thoroughly incriminated, and tied to a chair in what is shaky Allied territory at best, with no Brigadier Ishtal standing by to support his claims. But he must play the part.

"I'm a free citizen," Ryou rasps. "You can't hold me like this, it's illegal, it's torture—_aaah_—!"

_Godgodgod _shit_—_

The man's hand is like a flaming brand on his wrist, clamping down. The bones in his arm grate and grind together—_sick_ awful feeling and Ryou bites his tongue and tries not to howl or vomit—or _faint_, for that matter—

"Kaššāpu, thing of evil! _Speak_!"

"Yes," Ryou says, choking. "Yes—yes, I understand. I'll cooperate. Please, water—just some water, and then I'll talk—I'll talk—"

The boy-king watches them, sober and silent.

_Please_, Ryou thinks, _stop him_. The boy-king returns his gaze blankly. Fresh blue paint glistens, immaculate, about his eyes.

"_Are you the man who calls himself Bakura?_"

Ryou swallows and wets his throat with his own blood. Better start with names and work up to the whole shebang—right, names—_names_—

_My name is Inoue Ryou, and I_—  
_My name is Inoue Ryou, and I'm radioactive—in bed!_

"My name," Ryou says, wetly but carefully, "is Inoue Ryou. I'm—I'm a pilot, security class three—a transporter—" or he _was_, _had been_, because the little titanium package was no longer on his person. If he were _really_ what he said he was, HQ should have washed their hands of him already—

_Total mission failure, check; extensive property damage, check; royal natives royally pissed off—good-bye and good luck, Mr. Inoue! May you die mysteriously in a shuttle fire._

_Shit_, what a mess!

Now he must say, like a proper fool, _My government will hear of this!_ and close his lips and keep them closed, and try not to get beaten to death—but the idea of Brigadier Ishtal going to war on his behalf ruins it; it is so ridiculous he actually laughs, a painful rattle of a giggle.

The vizier sways to his feet, dizzy with rage. "What's funny?" he shouts, and belts Ryou across the face, so hard his vision blackens. "What's funny, you little shit? Shimon is dead!" Another blow and the blood is hot in Ryou's mouth, and his entire body reels backward, chair reeling precariously with him.

"Mahaado," the boy-king says, meekly—_meekly!_—and it is enough. The vizier sits, breathing noisily, and Ryou shimmies upright in his seat, working his mouth and feeling hesitantly about with his tongue. Lovely, miraculous, _very_ salty—

_ My name is Inoue Ryou, and despite all your commendable efforts I have yet to lose a tooth_—

Ryou shuts his mouth, and only opens it to scream, obediently, when they wrench his arm again, and then he babbles wet and careful nonsense: _I'm innocent, I did nothing, you bastards—oh I'm sorry god god Mother Amane Yuugi_.

Early morning of the sixteenth day of the month Ner (1822 GMT, Monday, March, April, September), headquarters pulls its tangled strings. His burns are dressed, his crooked arm splinted anew. Food and drink are brought to him in the underground cell. His sweater arrives, shriveled and carefully folded, on a second tray. His battered I.D. is presented to him on a third. But the Leogun is lost forever, and Bakura's knife with it.

The vizier glowers and makes a second apology, stiffly, and the boy-king watches, curious and intent, as Ryou swallows water.

The boy-king: seventeen or eighteen, his slim oiled body overwhelmed by gleaming gold at throat and wrists and ankles. _Yuugi, enthroned in his steel suit, isolated and glowing in the darkness—_

"Our father the king has gone to the House of Dust," the boy-king says, every word peculiar poetry, "and We are the last of the line. We fear and have feared assassins, this Bakura foremost among them.

"Forgive Mahaado his anger; he grieves. Since the passing of Our father, Shimon has been father and mother, brother and sister to us both. In the House of Dust he will stand once more at the side of Our father the king. It is good. Six days and six nights We will mourn him, and on the seventh day We will feast to his memory, and pour wine and water at the table of the gods; Shimon would want it so, though he was not a man of Baek.

"Exodia has returned to his temple and throne. The wounds are many—"

Exodia—the wrecked suit. Ryou winces.

"—but not beyond repair. The Forbidden One will walk again. But We are grateful, nevertheless, for what you have done. What you have brought to Us is the last of the symbols of Our royal lineage, the Millennium Eye. It is but a lump of metal, but with it—" and he glances at his vizier, who sits still but not quite chastened "—We quell at last the voices of dissent within the royal house."

"The Eye joins its brothers," the vizier says coolly. "Seven Millennium Items—the proof of blood. The coronation can thus proceed."

The boy-king smiles. "And it is seven and seven times We thank you, for the swiftness of your journey and the sincerity of your heart."

The star Šilla is high overhead when Ryou crawls into the Minotaur and sleeps with arms and legs untied for the first time in weeks, eagle-spread and aching on the floor of the cargo hold.

After the Baek suit, with its linen-wrapped rubber controls, it is pure joy to watch every silvery ripple across the Minotaur's touch screen as he punches in his access codes. But there is a discomfiting shudder as he leaves the atmosphere, and very soon comes the vulnerable feeling of hurtling through space in a disintegrating tin can. At least the videolink works, though it takes some increasingly agitated poking with a screwdriver, and Brigadier Ishtal's face appears disconcertingly pale and watery when the call finally goes through.

"_Well_," Brigadier Ishtal says wryly, "_he's done a number on you, hasn't he_."

"To be fair," Ryou says, "it was mostly the Baekans." Officially it was mostly _no one_; officially, Ryou does not exist; this never happened.

"_You can go on, of course._" Never a question—never a need for questions when she has his file—but she looks skeptical.

Ryou doesn't think about the bruises and burns and cuts, the sharp pain, the stupid, persistent cold, doesn't let himself think beyond _Remove tongue from roof of mouth; form words._ "Of course, Brigadier."

"_And the Minotaur is intact._"

"For the most part," Ryou says.

"_Oh?_"

"It—rattles." There's a more technical term for this, he knows, lodged somewhere in the recesses of his mind, bright and shining and professional, but he's tired, and he _hurts_. . .

"_Indeed. No, I suppose Kaiba has underestimated the destructive capacity of—sand particles._" Her mouth twitches, and Ryou remembers that Brigadier Ishtal's family were a desert people, two or three hundred earth years ago: from infinite sand to infinite stars. "_He assured me he had taken all possibilities into account._"

Now he sees it: he's fallen headlong into another game between Ishtal and Kaiba, intelligence and technology moguls and their never-ending intergalactic pissing contest.

If Ryou is harsh, it is only because previous volleys have resulted in spontaneous combustion and near loss of limbs in combat situations. As this latest round involves Bakura, unreadable, murderous, screaming lunatic, it can only end badly; probably bloodily. He entertains a brief, savage, surely drug-induced fantasy of Anzu crying over his body and Jounouchi looking bewildered, Yuugi blank-faced at the cremation. But no: at the end of this there will probably not be enough of him left to ship back and burn.

Surely it's not unreasonable that he would rather avoid blowing up in space. "Brigadier—"

"_Yes, you had better have it looked at._" There is something like warmth seeping into Ishtal's voice now."_It is Kaiba's newest little darling, after all._"

And Kaiba is Brigadier Ishtal's newest little darling!

The Kaiba Corporation has been the source of all Ishtal's gadgets and all Ryou's ships, his first suit in the war and his second and third and the pretty red Minotaur he took out on Saturday, maiden voyage—they were the designers and builders of the final wave of colonizing starships, the engineers of the last exodus. Under Gozaburo Kaiba, they established bases in every cluster and supercluster. There is even an office tucked away in forgotten Domino.

But eight years ago, before Ryou knew anything about suits and reactors and desperate maneuvers, Noah Kaiba broke his neck in a lab accident; the Five, _the Big Five_, cleared their desks and retired into ignominy; and Gozaburo Kaiba fell sixty meters from his office window and could not be resuscitated. Treachery, not suicide: Isis Ishtal's power stretches across the stars, and she and Seto Kaiba have signed their contracts in blood.

Kaiba—Seto Kaiba, boy-genius—doesn't care much for legalities. He maintains a general disdain for the authority of the Alliance, so often toppled by a few well-applied, untraceable deposits—occasionally briefcases—of yuan here and there. But Kaiba does like successes, and he backs what he likes with toys and money.

He's taken special, academic interest in this case—that much has been made clear by the gift of the Minotaur. Three weeks ago in the briefing room, Ishtal explained: _Murdering Maximillian Pegasos was easy enough—child's play to kill a man who has drunk himself into a stupor. But there were only so many ways to infiltrate the man's so-called Realm of Shadows, his Labyrinth, his Room of Paradoxes. Kaiba would very much like to know how he did it._

Ryou cannot imagine Bakura creeping like a thief in the night—he can't see Bakura cutting the throat of a man who lies dreaming, unaware and thus unafraid. Wherever Bakura goes there will be ghosts, ghosts and howling wind, and fire and blood: the so-called Realm of Shadows is now the Realm of Ash. . .

Ishtal's voice shears knife-like through his thoughts. "_I cannot overemphasize this, Inoue—you must take care. You are under especial scrutiny._"

KaibaCorp is always watching; they have always been watching. But _especial scrutiny_—that's code, and it means one thing and one thing only: the Alliance, tracking his every move, breathing down Ishtal's neck and his.

They're nervous—understandably. If they've caught wind of the Baekan fiasco already, they must be shitting bricks.

_No room for failure, now._

Ishtal does not seem particularly perturbed. "_I think you'd better have yourself looked at, too,_" she says. "_Inoue. I'm pulling you from active duty._"

The Minotaur seems to be shaking apart beneath him. He gapes at her.

"What—Brigadier!"

Her smile is vicious. "_You've suffered grievous injury at the hands of this madman Bakura. A few months' shore leave seems necessary. _Mens sana in corpore sano. _I'm certain you agree._"

"Wh—Brig—" his voice cracks "—_Brigadier_, I am _perfectly capable_—"

"_Ye-es_," she says, considering him, "_a short holiday will do you good. Somewhere away from prying eyes. You've always wanted to visit Centre East._"

"Holiday—prying—_Centre East_—"

He stares unseeing at a corner of the screen. Oh. _Oh._

"_You're orbiting Baek now, I gather_," Ishtal says, with rapid military cadence, and Ryou snaps to attention. "_Set course for East Quadrant, Epsilon Delta Zero_—"

He translates and taps in the coordinates as quickly as the fingers of his left hand will allow, but something registers in the less deadened parts of his brain, a neon flash of alarm:

"Brigadier—?"

"_Yes, those are the coordinates_," Ishtal says. Her eyes gleam, burnished blue. "_I believe you are acquainted with the sphere_."

07. The colony at East Quadrant, ED0, is whimsical in name and design but not entirely impractical. Twelve agricultural platforms surround a Bernal sphere like the horizontal ruts of a waterwheel: flat, rectangular sheets growing rice and soy, where soft light from Šilla and intelligent human prodding ensure strong harvests six times a year. At the heart of the conglomerate is Ukiyo, the manmade satellite, the Floating City, and it bulges with gambling halls and whorehouses.

Since the war the panels of Ukiyo have frozen into a sort of permanent twilight. What little repair money trickles from coalition sources into the coffers of the magistrate and his yakuza affiliates, whose files Ryou has flipped through: hundreds of archaic printouts which fill a cabinet at HQ on Gamma Seven. The whole sphere is crooked, home-sweet-home for Keith "The Bandit"Howard, Kajiki "The Tsunami"Ryota, "Raptor" and "Weevil" and a thousand other petty criminals who got away.

Like Professor Titus Karita.

And Mai Valentine.

Ryou docks quietly—_badly_—at the southern edge of the city-sphere and doesn't so much climb from the Minotaur as fall out of it, inhaling a curse. The panels are beginning to squeal, nearly dawn already, but the entire sector is otherwise eerily silent. Colossal mechanized arms load equally colossal cargo ships with cereals, and addicts lie dreaming and oblivious in the gutters between the machines. The conscious pay him no mind: he blends right in with the ugliest of them, shivering in the darkness in threadbare singlet and shorts, and there are worse things to be seen on Ukiyo than blistered burns and arms in slings—and when one stumbles upon the very bad, or the very strange, better to pretend not to have seen it at all. . .

. . .Like the hulking blue-black flagship looming like an anglerfish in the distance, tethered with glittering titanium chain and accompanied by what can only be an entire flotilla of ugly little coalition Wormdrakes, their boxy windows throwing hard red light out across the darkened bay.

It may not be _very bad_, but it's certainly _very strange_, especially considering that someone—or a whole lot of misguided someones—has taken pains to disguise the ships as merchant trawlers, going so far as to wrap the big guns with the flags of various trading colonies. The camouflage may have fooled the junkies and the robotic arms, but likely no one else. Small wonder Ukiyo has actually gone to sleep tonight, a thick, uneasy silence fallen over what Ryou remembers as a boisterous twenty-four-hour entertainment district.

Some of this uneasiness hangs over him and seeps into his skin. He would like to slip back into the Minotaur and take off immediately, _double quick!_ but if the people of Ukiyo are sleeping, the soldiers in those tin-can Worms definitely aren't, and he would not be departing inconspicuously so much as charging toward their flagship and kicking in the door. And hurling in a grenade.

One mutinous thought—

Brigadier Ishtal could have mentioned that she was sending him into the midst of one-bloody-hundred coalition _SOFs_—

_Some holiday!_

And then he snuffs it out, swallowing down his irritation. Being all-seeing and all-knowing, she must have her reasons—which he will root out in due time.

On Goryo, tossing him a handkerchief for the blood, 2nd Lt. Mai Valentine said: _Jesus F., kiddo, keep your head down. You may live longer._

08. Further from the port and the sight of the black ships, the city is livelier, lit with flashing digital signboards. The smell of cakes and charred meat twines through the foul smoke of burning plastic, and there is thrumming music: electric shamisen. People line the streets, fighting, laughing, singing, eating.

—Still, this uneasiness, floating like oil on deep water. Ready to burn.

Ryou lowers himself gingerly into a red plastic chair and orders congee. The vendor gives him a puzzled once-over, blinking at his swollen and bloodied face, and whirls away with the single yuan chip that Ryou presses into his hand. He returns seconds later with a bowl huge, hot, and steaming, flecked with little pieces of gelatinous century egg.

Ryou forgets everything except the bowl and the spoon and doesn't remember until he's scraped out every last bit of rice. It's too salty, scalding the roof of his mouth—nothing like the lukewarm, sandy-sweet kachamak brought to him in the dark of the Baekan dungeon, evidently the food of kings.

"Good, eh, duckie?" the vendor says, approvingly, and Ryou returns to Ukiyo, darkness of a different kind pressing against his eyes.

"Yes—excellent, thanks." The recycled colony air is a cold relief against his tongue. He slides a few more chips than necessary across the counter and attempts a smile. "And a coffee, please."

"No coffee," comes the grunted reply, just as Ryou expects. "Tea only."

"Oh, well, sure," Ryou says. The skin of his face feels stretched. He dims the maniac smile. "Why no coffee?"

"Blockade," says the vendor. "Damned if I know why."

"But I got in all right."

"Oh, yeah?" the vendor says, nodding at Ryou's immobilized arm. "Look like you went for a dive without a 'chute, you do. What happened to _you_, eh?"

"Ehm," Ryou extemporizes. "Bar fight."

The vendor pulls tea from a tin can into a glass tumbler. "Yeah? Hope you gave good as you got, then, duckie!"

"Hah," Ryou mutters. For a moment there is sand in his eyes again, the Baek reactor hot against the back of his neck. He clears his throat. "How long have they been there? The Worm ships."

"Fortnight, give or take. Haven't done nothing, just sitting there, soldiers don't even come out. Magistrate goes in puffing, comes out yellow and shaking all over." The vendor turns a baleful eye toward the dock, pouring all the while and never spilling a drop. "Haven't seen a flotilla this big since the war. Giving us all the screaming habdabs, they are."

Stranger and stranger—

"Surely it isn't a blockade," Ryou says. Ukiyo may be rotten to its hollow clockwork core, but it is spinning in solid Allied territory, and the Alliance would never starve its own. "The ships in the dock—they're being loaded."

The vendor scowls. "Yeah, and—mark me—that rice will rot in the hold. It don't fit the dictionurry; it's bloody _weird_, I'll give you that—but it's a ruddy blockade is what it is. They let you come in and they don't pay you no mind, but they sure as hell ain't letting you back out—"

He makes the final pull and slams the tumbler down. "Leastaways not 'til they get what they _want_, duckie—"

09. It doesn't matter what Ryou wants, but if it mattered he would want these things, in this order: a shower, a handful of red-and-white capsules, and a good long sleep.

What the Alliance wants, on the other hand—

On _Ukiyo_, Ryou thinks incredulously—_Ukiyo?_

There's nothing on Ukiyo; only humans, small and soft and beautifully unaware, scraping out ant lives on an openwork metal planet. _The Floating World_. Whimsy and illusion.

_I believe you are acquainted with the sphere._

Yes—Ryou is acquainted. He knows Ukiyo like the back of a hand, but a hand that perpetually surprises him: with big fresh bruises, or the smaller pinker wrinkles in his palms, tiny triangular scars between his fingers, previously unseen.

His penultimate team gig was a retrieval, and it didn't matter what he wanted then, either—

_Titus Karita_, Ryou thinks, and sees the data key again as though Mai is sitting beside him in the café on Gamma Seven, waving it under his nose, _Ground control to Major Inoue, hel_lo_, anyone home?_

Professor K., fifty-six, one hundred seventy-seven centimeters and one hundred kilos; black hair, black eyes, blocky chin, sharp beaky nose. Titus K., K_-sensei_, defector—but before all that, just Karita Tomohide, Sergeant. Big bully of a man but a good head on his enormous shoulders. Enlisted for the school money. Sparkling military career, then university, then coalition thinktank and a running start into politics; then scandal, then Ukiyo—

Then thin air—then nothing.

He stands beside the Minotaur and looks at the black ships. Blockade—what a dusty old word!

_Titus Karita_—

It hits him like a bomb blast and shrapnel, what the soldiers and their officers in their flotilla must want, and he stands at the edge of the dock while the panels groan and the star Šilla casts dim light into black space and _hates_ Brigadier Ishtal, simply hates her, because he knows what she wants, too.

Ishtal has her government contacts: Shadi, who guards the Alpha colonies and adjusts them like weights in a scale; Odion, rooted deep in the shadows of Southern Quadrant leadership; and her own baby brother, as rumor goes, the warlord who dances on the borders of unknown Deva. She has these and more: Seto Kaiba and the whole of his mercantile empire revolving in her hand—men and women working toward equilibrium in each quadrant of Allied territory, maybe even in Deva—maybe even _beyond_ Deva.

But she's picked Ryou to send into the maw of the beast. _Take care_.

If he fails, he's a dead man: dead and forgotten while Brigadier Ishtal continues, undisturbed, adding and subtracting, until a feather balances a lump of meat. Nothing devoured; nothing gained. And they all float on.

He has half a mind to refuse: _I won't do it. I _can't_._

Or shout: _You're mad!_

But if Ishtal is mad—

This whole adventure has been mad, utterly insane. Ryou remembers the heat, the Baek sand, the dank underground cell and—and _Goryo_, dust in his throat and Bakura's tongue hot on his skin—

One life in exchange for one shift, one tiny advantage. Of all Ishtal's people, he is the most expendable. He is neither rich nor powerful, and he is alone. His job, his life—in the grand scheme of things, it's not much to lose. Someday Yuugi, Jounouchi, Anzu and Honda will all be dead, and Ryou forgotten. He can die twenty years from now—or this week, this day, this hour.

And if he should, unthinkably, _succeed_—

If he succeeds, all doors open, and the gas clouds of Deva can never stop him again.

—_God_, if Ishtal is mad, then so is Ryou—stark and raving!

But he's not mad enough to think he can do this alone.

10. The first time Ryou comes to Ukiyo, he's just along for the ride, the satellite orbiting Mai and her new partner—very nice ring to their names, _Valentine and Valon_, _Valon and Valentine_—relaying messages from HQ while they play sex tourist and sample drinks. For a couple days, it's almost like a vacation.

Then their contact sours and Professor Titus Karita evaporates, and it all goes to hell in a dingy little bar on the corner. Mai does her thing with the kneecaps, and Ryou keeps his head down, but Valon gets himself shot through the neck. They stop the bleeding quickly enough, but it isn't likely he will ever wake up again.

Ryou recites their report in dull clinical terms, _third vertebrae shattered, death instantaneous_, and Mai corroborates, standing shoulder to shoulder, blank-faced, in Brigadier Ishtal's briefing room.

It's the end of _Valentine and Valon_, but Valentine and Inoue go on, for one last delivery that runs smoothly from start to finish.

"It's been great, kiddo," Mai tells him, three weeks before she disappears. "You know where to find me."

He does, but she doesn't look particularly pleased to see him.

"Well, of all the gin joints—" she begins. "Jesus F. Christ, Inoue."

Ryou smiles, tentatively. "How is he—?"

In the flickering lights Valon looks like a wax model, his closed eyes sunken, his hair a dark, limp stain on the pillow. His fingernails are long and untrimmed, ugly beside Mai's prettily manicured hands.

Mai sighs and gives the lifeless fingers a squeeze. "Same old. Sometimes I think he's fucking with me—and if that's the case I'm going to kick his lazy ass—you hear me, Val? I'm gonna kick your ass. Hey, Val, Inoue's come to visit. Remember Inoue?

"Save it," she says quietly. "I know you didn't come just to say hi."

Ryou looks away. "Sorry."

"Save it, I said. We can talk somewhere else." She shoulders her bag. "Cutting it close, aren't you, hun? Another ten minutes and I woulda been gone—okay, let's vamoose. I'm thirsty."

"Best wishes for your brother, sir," the receptionist tells Ryou, as they step from the clinic into the thin gray light of afternoon. "Miss."

"Brother, huh?" Mai says dryly. "News to me."

Ryou grimaces. "Sorry."

"My god, stop apologizing! Why not _my_ brother, huh?"

"I think I look more like Valon."

"Har har. Hilarious."

"Sorry," Ryou says, deliberately this time. It is unexpectedly easy to be frivolous, so he tries the smile, too.

"Oh, cut it out," Mai says. "You're not fooling anyone, Inoue. You look like shit."

Ryou cringes and follows her ten blocks, down increasingly empty streets and through purple door-flaps into _The Kunoichi, Restaurant and Bar_—and evidently unauthorized _Casino_ as well. There is a lull in conversation as men and women look up from their chips to take Mai in: those red, red lips and that long blonde mane, the black bustier and that tight purple miniskirt, those big black boots, those _legs_, and finally the black thigh-holster and the Baby Dragon semi-automatic strapped to it. The glances they throw Ryou are few and passing, distinctly unimpressed and vaguely hostile.

The barkeep slaps a hand on his counter. "Hi, there, my pretty Peahen!"

"That's Kujaku to you, buddy," Mai snaps, terse but friendly. "Baijiu, two. Make it snappy."

The barkeep grins at her. "Sure, sweetheart. To what do we owe this—"

"Old friend of mine," Mai says, nodding at Ryou. "And he's thirsty."

"Hello, Thirsty Old Friend of Mai's," the barkeep says cheerfully, "I'm Jean Claude and I ask no questions." He rakes his eyes over Ryou once and whistles. "Phew, look at the state of him! Glad I ain't your friend, Kujaku Mai!"

Mai's flinch is almost imperceptible, but Ryou feels it: a tremor in her fingers as she takes him by the elbow and steers him toward a corner table. Jean trails them, bearing a bottle and shot glasses.

"On the house, my sweet darling—"

"Go away, Jean—"

"Okay, okay, baby—" and Ryou's hand twitches toward his belt as Jean whirls on him—a moment of complete teetering insanity when his fingers close on air and he thinks he will have to break Jean's neck one-handed—

But Jean is grinning, albeit baring more teeth than strictly necessary for a friendly smile. "Listen, pal, I don't know your relationship with my Mai, but—ow, goddamn!"

Mai rolls her eyes and swats him again. "Jesus F., Magnum—piss off!"

"Baby, you treat me cruel," Jean says, but wisely retreats.

"Jesus," Mai mutters. "I'm surrounded by nuts. Sorry, we can talk shop in a minute. Just—

"Val's not doing so great," she says, quiet. "His lungs are going. Don't think he's gonna stick around much longer."

"You could—"

"Transfer him?" Mai snorts. "Like I haven't though about it! A hundred hours to the nearest Alpha hospital—he wouldn't make it, Inoue. Anyway, what are they going to do? Hook him up to some shinier machines? Keep him alive another fifty years, so he can spend it all lying there with his eyes shut?"

"I'm sorry," Ryou says.

"Uuugh," Mai says. "Never mind. Stop apologizing. What do you want? Oh—what the hell happened to you? Let's start there."

"Ehm—had a run-in with a terrorist." He scans the room. All clear: they've gone back to their dice, and Jean Claude the jealous barkeep is busy wiping glasses. "I can't say more."

"Classified, huh?" Mai throws back a shot and wipes her lip with the back of a hand, and then the Iron Bitch is in his face, hissing, "Inoue, you're nuttier than anyone else here if you think you can just show up, busted to hell and back, tell me nothing, and expect me to help you—"

"Karita," Ryou says, desperately. "I—it's—Karita's involved!"

He's showing his hand early—he's putting it under the bloody microscope—but he needs her, has to interest her somehow. And Professor Titus Karita will do it. Karita, who got away and got Valon shot.

Mai's face goes completely, carefully blank. "Karita," she repeats.

"Y—" Ryou takes a small burning sip. _ Coward! _"Yes."

Mai folds her arms. "All right," she says, settling back. "I'm all ears."

"Karita's here," Ryou says, soft.

Mai doesn't blink, but something like satisfaction glows in her eyes. "I knew it," she says. "I _knew_ it. Where is he?"

Shit. "Er—it doesn't matter," Ryou says. "He'll be dead soon—if we don't do something."

"This coming from HQ?"

"No. Listen, Mai—" Ryou leans in, and this time she meets him halfway. There is no file between them now, no printouts or discs or guns—only their clenched hands and the green glass bottle—but it's just like old times, as Mai might phrase it, familiar and soothing. The memory of cool competence simultaneously steadies him and makes his heart beat faster. "You've read his file—I think you remember the details better than I do—so you know that before Karita went underground, he was a coalition soldier—"

"Sergeant," Mai says, with a very hard smile. "God knows he never did anything to deserve it!"

"But he _did_, Mai," Ryou says, quickly and breathlessly. "He did and it's catching up to him now. Fifteen years ago he led a squadron attack on a mining colony—an _unarmed_ colony. It was massacre. Ninety-nine people, and—" his heart is really pounding now; this isn't some candyfloss weave of lies but the _truth_ "—and one got away."

"Ex-military personnel have been dying like flies," Mai says slowly. Her eyes widen. "_All the ones who were involved with—_oh my God!"

"Yes," Ryou breathes, reeling her in. "And Karita is next. The Alliance knows; they've caught on to the pattern. They're here to guard him from—er—the one that got away. Karita's _here_, Mai—he's on that Wormdrake flagship, I know it. We can get him. We can finally—"

_That son of a bitch is as good as ours!_ Mai cheers, and Valon laughs and toasts to it.

—"No," Mai says. "Are you crazy?"

_What?_ Shock straightens his spine. _That's not how this is supposed to go!_ He's jolted back, he realizes, and he should really lean forward now and try to catch her eye again—

_We have to do this_, he should say. _For _Valon_, Mai—_

_ Are you crazy?_

Instead he says, wavering, "Mai."

"No," she says. "Jesus F., Inoue. The Brig wants you to storm a coalition ship—_a coalition ship_—to break out a protected witness. And you just, what, saluted her? Yeah, okay, Brigadier, I'd be happy to risk life and citizenship for that worthless piece of shit Karita? Christ—Inoue, you only have one arm!"

He inhales again and again, but the pathetic quaver in his voice doesn't go away. "There's more to it than that, Mai. Karita's not—the objective. I thought—I thought I'd leave Karita to you."

"Well, thanks for thinking of me, but I'm not gonna declare war on the whole damn Alliance. For _Karita_? That slimy bastard? Are you kidding me? No way, José!"

Ryou flashes on twenty different things to say, and says nothing, and imagines the white body of the Necrofear hurtling into starry space with Karita's corpse stiff and bloated in its curled fingers.

"All right," he says finally. "Okay. I'm sorry. I thought—" He looks down at their fisted hands.

Mai sighs. "If it were just me, I'd be with you in milliseconds, I swear, Inoue. A year ago—definitely. _To hell with the Alliance!_ and all that. But not now. I'm not flying solo anymore. I have people here. I can't just take off and never look back."

"Okay," Ryou says, numbly.

"Jesus—just quit, kiddo!" Mai exclaims. "Tell the Brig to fuck off like I'm sure you've been wanting to for the past _century_, and _get on_ with your life!"

Ryou stares at her.

"What?" he manages.

"—hell, if you want to go out with a bang, I can shoot you—let Jean spread the news around, lie low here a few months until the Brig forgets you ever existed—four months, five—well, maybe a year—"

_ Must be nice._

_ It's tiring._

_I'll mention it to Grandpa—what you said. _

He can't see himself back on YG0, handing Yuugi laser-saws and screwdrivers, biking parts from North Port to the Turtle Shop, stopping at Honda's for curry twice a day—upending a box of bolts at Jounouchi and laughing at his ridiculous stories—smiling at Anzu when she comes to visit—sitting wedged in a booth every Saturday night, cheek pressed against cold window-glass—drowsing in his childhood bed and feeling the ache in his mended arm as the comets go by—

_ Mr. Ace _Pilot!

"There are easier ways to commit suicide," Mai says, too gently.

"This is bigger than me," Ryou whispers. "Kind of a fate of the universe thing, you know?" The smile twitches and wobbles and finally sticks, and he looks at her, smiling crookedly. Gorgeous, _gorgeous_ Mai; she's doing so well. "It's fine—_really_, it's fine, and it's good to see you again. I just need a mechanic, and then—"

He stops. Mai's palm is cool and damp against his mouth.

"Jesus, hun," she says. "You make me feel like I kicked a puppy. Stick around a couple of days. I'll get you what you need."


	3. 02

origins of symmetry  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…

A/N: Part two. Hope you've enjoyed the ride so far. Also I need to say that when I started writing this (about eight months ago, lol), I hadn't seen Firefly. Last month I finally watched a few episodes of Firefly, and was like, "Oh, hey…that sounds kind of familiar. Oops." You'll see what I mean in a bit.

_Girl, you know that I hate to lie to you  
__I'm afraid that it's the one thing that I must do  
_'_Cause secret identities are for the safety of you and me_

-How I Became the Bomb, "Secret Identity"

00. Mai taps two fingers on the side of her glass. Ryou nods, a slight dip of the chin; they're being watched. It's just a little bit cold where he's sitting—cold on his face and neck and back, and his palms are slick. He keeps both hands very flat and still on the table.

"Windows to your left," Mai says through a tight-lipped smile, "door twelve o'clock. Take your pick."

"Door," Ryou says. He forces himself to laugh, like she's just said something incredibly funny. Valon is actually laughing; Valon thinks this is hilarious.

"Door," Ryou repeats—

—_door_. Ryou flails to his feet, jerks around—too slow, much too slow, Mai will think he's gotten soft—

Blonde woman in a dirty lab-coat, pink jumper and jeans, short hair, surprised black eyes, clipboard, hand not yet uncurled from the knob. The nails are short and unvarnished: definitely not Mai.

"Hello," Ryou says lamely, sinking back down. She nods at him and steps on.

Valon awake was loud and boisterous, all smiles until someone pissed him off. Their first handshake was Ryou's first handshake in years: the smell of leather and oil threading through the cold and a warm strong hand finding his in the twilight, tugging him too close and squeezing until he feels awkward—the face is in shadow but in the outline of it he sees a flash of teeth and eyes—_Pleasure. Can't say I've heard much about you, but any friend of Mai's is a friend of mine, how do you do? _Mai, arms akimbo, a sweet-smelling presence at his back, laughing: _Let go, Val, he's gonna clock you._

He remembers the three of them working in silence; and he remembers Valon one night, looking sidelong at Mai and never saying a word. But he still doesn't really know how to deal with this Valon—Valon quiet and blank.

01. He sits there four hours, rubbing warmth back into his hands and knees and cheeks and kneading the burns to stay awake; Mai doesn't show. The clinic grows quieter, cold and darkness bleeding in through the windows.

Ryou forces himself up before his legs get too stiff and walks back into the city-sphere, his shorts and singlet drawing stares, his teeth clicking and clacking. He enters the first bath house he sees, pays the full amount, looking down, away, unsmiling, desperate to leave the cold.

In a corner of the locker room, he fumbles at the laces of his boots with clumsy cold fingers and strips off his clothes and the sling. His ribs are flowering purple and green with pulpy bruises, and the skin of his legs is red, bubbling in some places and stretched taut in others. The water stings his calves, his lips, but old scars feel dead to the touch.

He brushes his teeth; he rubs his face and right shoulder with a cloth. He washes his hair and soaks in steaming water, listening to the grumblings of a pair of cereal merchants.

"—said they were booked through for the month. I don't want to go back to the docks, I tell her I'll live in her goddamn closet as long as it's warm, I'll pay a little extra—"

"What did she say to that?"

"And she told me there wasn't an inch of space left and then she shut the—"

_"Door," Ryou repeats. He can feel the blood beating in his kneecaps, in his wrists._

_"Count of _ten_," Mai says. "_Nine_. . ._eight_. . ."_

_Valon smiles._

_Ryou very slowly and carefully leans back. His hands leave streaks of sweat on the table. On "two" he's going to fall out of his chair, and on "one" he's going to get a hand on his gun and roll and roll and get up shooting, and sometime between "zero" and never they are all going to get out the door and into a ship and far fucking away from this place._

_Valon's lips are stretched in a big, taut grin, and his face is bone white with—fury, Ryou realizes with a lurch._

_"_Six_, _five_. . ."_

Four_, Ryou thinks. _Three_._

_"Fuck you, motherfuckers!" Valon yells, opening fire, and actually kicks over his chair._

_"Oh, for Christ's sake," Mai snaps, "that was _completely fucking unnecessary_," and Ryou shoots at the next hand that moves, blows up a bottle of baijiu and puts a hole in the man holding it. Mai upends the table and she and Ryou duck down behind it. Valon dives left and vanishes behind the bar._

_Ryou aims, shoots a man through the shoulder—keeps his head low. Hair in his eyes; he swipes it away._

"—figured I could stay with her for at least a few days, but she tells me she's got a new girlfriend and doesn't want any misunderstandings. Then I try Kenji's and he says 'Sorry, buddy, been full up for weeks,' I mean, what the fuck is this—"

_"Shit," Mai says. "Valon. Hey. _Valon_. Oh Christ—"_

He sinks down until the water scalds his lips.

"—have the magistrate by the bollocks."

"The magistrate is an unscrupulous rat bastard. I bet they're payin' him off. He looks the other way and somebody out there lines his pockets with chips. Meanwhile it's people like us, people on the ground, people trying to make a living, that's who gets fucked ov—"

He woke up in the cargo hold this morning with a big ringing bell in between his ears and his tongue filling his mouth like a sock. He hasn't been so hung over since Yuugi and Anzu's engagement party—

_ Mai bending toward him—_

'Night, _Ryou says, fuzzy around the edges, warm at last, _see you tomorrow, I know where to find you_, smiles._

Fuck you_, Mai says, _fuck you, fuck Karita, and fuck the Brigadier too_—_

Is he_, Mai says. _Is he, oh Jesus_—_

Ryou holds his breath, sinks lower. Closes his eyes.

He lingers in the coatroom and assembles a new set of clothes: two shirts from opposite sides of the room, which he shrugs on one after another over his singlet, a dock worker's thick woolen gloves, someone else's woolly green hat, and some unfortunate delivery boy's hakama, too coarse to be comfortable, tied gingerly over his shorts. Finally: a coat, gray and nondescript and worn at the elbows. On further inspection, it yields useful hidden pockets, some of which are filled with cash. Ryou adopts it gladly, shrugs it on like a cape. It settles on him, heavy, and transforms the freezing sprint back to the Minotaur into a brisk evening stroll.

Cocooned in darkness and warmth, bracing the broken arm against his chest, he imagines Bakura—sharp teeth, a shock of red cloth—hiding among the junkies, biding his time.

They are both waiting: Ryou for Bakura, and Bakura for—

_Tinder_, Ryou thinks grimly. _Something to burn_: the coarse remnants of hair on Karita's big balding head.

He doesn't look at the black ships. He climbs into the Minotaur and shuts the hatch, and he sleeps. That's the first day.

02. He buys breakfast from a stall by the docks—steamed rice cakes in a paper sheaf, round and white and tasteless—and eats it on the way to the clinic, tosses two pills down with it. He has painkillers for lunch. He waits until the curfew bell sounds at nine and the hallways of the clinic go dark. Mai doesn't come.

She doesn't come the third day, or the fourth.

"Friend of yours?" the blonde doctor asks, swooping in to help him tug the curtains shut.

Ryou thinks about it. He and Valon really don't look alike at all.

"Yes," he says, to Valon's wasted arms. "Old friend."

"Those yakuza pals of his," the doctor continues, "I hope they aren't friends of yours, too?"

Ukiyo contacts, maybe, though it doesn't make sense that they'd be keeping tabs on Valon three years after they sold him out and had him shot and cremated.

"Yakuza, _really_?" Ryou says, and opens his face: wide eyes, wide O mouth. Inwardly, he winces. If the doctor's noticed him then someone else is bound to have connected some dots—someone much less savory—and he's already been to the clinic three times too many. _Too many mistakes, Ryou, you _idiot_._

"That's right," the doctor says. "I thought you might be acquainted, considering," and she gestures at Ryou's sling. "You have that looked at?"

"Yes, thanks," Ryou says. _By the royal physician of Baek, no less._ "Accident on the docks. Slippery out there. Lucky—" he's babbling now, but he can't well stop mid-sentence "—I didn't break a leg, don't you th—"

"They're a nasty lot," the doctor says. "Keep our beds here filled. Their striker's the worst of them. Put a bullet between your eyes from miles away. So I'm told, anyway." She doesn't look at him, lowers her voice. "On these docks there are never any accidents. Be careful, eh, sweetheart?"

He tries _The Kunoichi, Restaurant and Bar_ next; Mai isn't there, and Jean-Claude Magnum doesn't ask questions, but he doesn't answer any, either.

Walking back to the Minotaur, he passes a display of white dresses and two vampish red ones and feels punched in the gut with the memory—

_Yuugi is getting married_.

It feels ancient—news ten thousand light years past. He thinks about asking Mai for suggestions, straight-faced, deadpan: _I need guns and a wedding present_. He imagines bringing Mai to the wedding: Ryou and alluring plus-one of mysterious origins. She'll come in deep, skin-tight purple, make a toast like they're all very old, very good friends; she'll tell Honda the food's great, tell Ryou to get her a drink, tell Yuugi she works in—_oh, this and that_ over a flute of cheap champagne or _I'm in shipping, honey, 's how I met Buster here_. Anzu will ask her to dance and Jounouchi will fall madly in love—

_Snap out of it_, he thinks; _focus_, but can't quite soothe the sharpness in his chest.

04. On the fifth day, Ryou leaves the sling in the cargo hold, ties up his hair, and goes for a walk. The smell of fermenting rice is thick and sour in the air. He looks at the ships from every possible angle, buys tall glass of hot, dark tea from another vendor, with which he swallows the last of his pills—"Rough night?" this one says, and Ryou smiles and shrugs with one shoulder—and looks some more.

He's gone an hour, maybe three. When he comes back there is a girl standing beside the Minotaur—a little wisp of a girl, in a yellow man's shirt, dirty jeans and a bulky pink vest, with cinnamon-colored hair all down her back. She has her hands on the hull, slim fingers spread flat.

The first thing Ryou thinks is that he is completely fucked. The black ships fly out of his head; the Baek prison dissolves; he imagines a cold clean room where Ukiyo yakuza demand the name of his employer and break his fingers one by one.

He sidles closer. With any luck, she's eight miles high and pumped full of hallucinogens, and a tap on the shoulder will be enough to—

"Hi," he says. "Hi—hey." The girl doesn't spook and she doesn't reply, and everything sinks and tightens and goes cold between Ryou's ribs as he realizes he may have to hurt her.

He bends until his mouth is level with her ear, and murmurs, "Something interesting?"

"Something interesting, hell!" the girl says, clear and sweet and utterly, dangerously sober. "Do you know what this is?"

"No," Ryou lies. "What is it?"

She strokes the hull. "A Minokentaurus! KaibaCorp only released twenty last year, from their own factories, and only from Alpha Twelve and Thirteen—the propulsion subsystem is the most advanced in single-passenger civilian craft ever _ever_! You wouldn't look at it twice, next to an Archer or St. Jeanne—I mean, it _is_ pretty sleek—but the real beauty is in the propulsion. It's still experimental so they're phasing it in gradually. . .it's a pity. It really is one of the best. I mean, if it were _me_—"

She turns, and Ryou meets her eyes, green-gray and strangely cloudy, and sees her pupils, small and black and sharp.

Everything stops.

"You don't know?" the girl says slowly. "I thought this was your ship."

"It is," Ryou says, transfixed.

She smiles. Her smile is very pretty; she has a dimple in one cheek. "I thought so," she says. "I thought I saw you get out, a few hours ago—"

He can't look away from her, from her dirty, heart-shaped face and straggling red-brown hair. He flexes his good hand and looks at her until her smile becomes strained and nervous.

"So," the girl says, fidgeting, "what do you say?"

Ryou blinks. "Sorry, what?"

She blushes beautifully pink. "I said, I knocked yesterday," she says. "Couldn't be sure you were still inside, but a lot of the merchants do it, and anyway there's a blockade so you're probably stuck here for—um, that is, I mean, I knocked yesterday and you weren't in, so I thought I'd try again today." She bows. "Shizuka Kawai. Please treat me well."

"Ryo—to," Ryou croaks. He clears his throat. "Er. Hiroto. Honda Hiroto."

"Honda-san." She beams at him. "Honda-san, can I ask you—do you need your ship looked at?"

In his peripheral vision, the docks start to move again; the noise of the shipyard rises to a roar in his ears.

"Looked at?" Ryou repeats, like an idiot.

Shizuka Kawai nods. "Uh-huh. Your ship may look fine on the outside, Honda-san, but there's no telling what's going on inside unless I crank it open and have a look. I promise you I'll have it running smoother than it was when you bought it. And don't worry about the money; we can talk about that later. So. . .what do you say?"

_No, thanks; thanks, no; sorry_.

But he can say yes and make her happy; he can say yes and never see her again—

He _wants_ to see her again—

—"Okay," Ryou says. "Okay, sure."

"_All right!_" Shizuka Kawai claps, delighted, and Ryou sees for the first time that her hands are dirty. She points at a curving line of buildings in the distance. "My shop's by the warehouse at the far end, waaay over there; you can tether your ship in front. You'll have to fly low and close to the sphere—the Worms get nervous, otherwise."

"Okay," Ryou says again.

"I'm there every day, seven to seven," Shizuka says. "Come by any time. It was great meeting you, Honda-san."

"Right," Ryou stammers. "Yeah. Same here."

She smiles at him and bows—Ryou jolts, bows back—and is gone by the time he straightens up.

05. Forty-eight hours pass. The circulated air in the sphere is now marginally less stale than air in the Minotaur, so Ryou assembles his files and takes them to the ruin of a much older warehouse overlooking the docks. Dock rats have long since stripped the place of all the metal and glass they could find and carry off; the wreckage is deserted. Ryou sets up shop on one of the larger dockside slabs of concrete. Mai has yet to make contact, but he isn't going to ask around again; once is enough. Word will get to her eventually (_creepy kid with white hair asking after you, Peahen_), if she isn't long gone and laughing at him, at Ryou and the Brigadier and the whole blighted venture, light years away on another colony.

Would she leave Valon behind, Ryou wonders. The thought rises unbidden and pathetic: _She left me, after all, and never looked back_. He thinks about spending every waking hour in the clinic.

But there's nothing to stop Mai from spiriting Valon away if she wants—

And he's drawn enough attention to himself already—

The clinic visits, he decides, stop today.

The mad recklessness of seven days ago has faded: he's going to need a small army to get inside the Wormdrake flagship, and for that, he needs Mai. But he doesn't know how much longer he can afford to wait.

He's still brooding when Shizuka Kawai appears in his peripheral vision, a pair of tattered sneakers and dirty jeans and the tips of thick black sausage-fingered gloves, startling him so badly he can't stop the convulsive full-body twitch that follows. He waits until she's in front of him and casting a vague shadow over his papers before he looks up. Over her shoulder, there's a little merchant skipper tethered to the nearest bollard—and beyond it a sea of cargo ships—and the blue-black of the armada, indistinguishable from the blackness of space but for its gleaming red lights. She's peering down at his files.

"K—Kawai-san," Ryou says, closing the folder.

"Honda-san," she says brightly, meeting his eyes. "_Konbanwa_."

Muscles twitch in his legs. He sits up straighter.

"Fancy meeting you here," she says. She hops onto the slab and draws her legs up under her. "Come here a lot?"

"Mm," Ryou says, noncommittal. "Thought I'd spend some time outside."

"And enjoy our famous Ukiyo sunset?" she says, grinning. "I don't see your ship parked outside my garage," she adds. "I hope you weren't lured away by someone else's offer, Honda-san."

"Sorry," Ryou says. "I—it's been busy, it's been—I'll bring it as soon as I can."

"It's fine," she says, smiling at him. "You don't have to—"

"I want to," Ryou interrupts. "I will." And then, because he can't leave well enough alone: "As soon as I can," he repeats. "I'll bring it. I will. There's something wrong with the engines," he says, "so I'll bring it in."

"I'll look forward to it, then," Shizuka says, after a pause.

"What are you working on?" she asks.

"Contracts," Ryou says, setting the files down and sliding them under his left boot. He counts to three and says, with what he hopes is an appropriate amount of curiosity, "What brings you here?"

"Oh—taking a walk," she says. "To see the ships. This is one of my favorite spots, actually—great view, isn't it? You can see everything from here. I mean, not _everything_ everything. But most of the docks."

Ryou knows. He's been here before with Mai, running recon.

"There's your Minokentaurus," Shizuka says. "Just over there—that slice by the Yamata, that's your ship. That Yamata has been here almost a month now."

_Almost a month_. It's been, unbelievably, four weeks since the clusterfuck on Baek. He's been underground—literally underground—for most of that time. Bakura could be anywhere in the universe by now, Ryou thinks, rationally-speaking, but—Brigadier Ishtal seems to think so, and Ryou is sure of it—Bakura is here.

Ryou wonders if this is what people call a gut instinct—this sickening certainty, rising up to choke him. _He's here, and he's had a three-week head start._

He's frowning. He stops. "It's quieter than I expected," he says.

"Yeah," Shizuka says. "It used to be a lot livelier, but now. . .well, no matter what everyone says, I think Worms are kind of cute—oh—when I say Worms I mean Wormdrakes, those boxy black ships out there. Everyone thinks they're ugly, but you have to admit they're pretty impressive in formation—but—yeah," she says, leaning forward, talking faster, "there's a problem with these Worms. Which is why I think the Alliance needs to upgrade—not that they'd ever listen to me, but Wormdrakes are _ancient_. They should have signed a contract with KaibaCorp yesterday! Can you imagine what a fleet of Minokentaurii could—" she's turning pink "—oh, jeez, I'm sorry, I got carried away—"

"There's a problem?" Ryou prompts.

"Well—not a _problem_, I guess," Shizuka says, sheepish but warming to her topic again. "It's just that Worms are slow—solid, but slow. They've built a space-wall with these, which is smart, but just think—if—let's say hypothetically—a single-passenger lightcraft can make it around that wall, or through it, they aren't going to be able to follow it for long. Which is what makes me think this is political—just for show, like maybe the magistrate called them in to intimidate someone. But—if they're serious, I guess they're counting on firepower to make up for speed—" she points "—they brought the big guns, see? Those are _huge_. You'd have to be crazy to try something."

Bakura, Ryou thinks, is crazy enough to try something. Ryou will just have to match him. And as long as Minotaur's engine holds. . .

No: even the Minotaur is too big to dart through any cracks that might exist; the Minotaur will make a big, beautiful, bright red target.

"Supposing everyone tried it at once?" Ryou suggests, hesitantly, because he's a clueless civilian tourist who doesn't know anything about frontal assaults on Wormdrakes in formation—

He follows her gaze to the glowing red maw of the flagship.

"We-ell," she says, doubtful. "I don't know. You mean if every single ship in these docks just revved their engines and went for it? Maybe, but—no—these are merchant ships. They aren't built for speed either, and none of them have the heavy artillery you need to match a Wormdrake. I think—you can't break the Worm wall and you shouldn't try to—what you need is something _really_ fast. Something Fiend-class, maybe, with modified engines."

"Like a Gremlin," Ryou says, and bites his tongue—so much for the clueless civilian tourist.

"Like a Gremlin!" she agrees. "A Byser Shock could do it, too. You'd be gone before they could get a lock on you." She turns on him suddenly, dimpling, voice bright with approval. "You know your ships!"

"I," Ryou says helplessly. "A little bit, I guess."

"Have you piloted anything Fiend-class before?"

"Nnn," Ryou says. "No. I'm a transporter. I—ehm. Cargo space. Is important."

_Smooth_. He winces.

She's going to ask him what he usually ships, and the only thing coming to mind is the Baekan's little golden eye. A fresh burst of something like misery—

"There's a stall closer to center-sphere," Shizuka says instead. "The nasi lemak is delicious."

"Yes," Ryou says, staring at her, and then, sharply: "—What?"

She slips nimbly off the concrete slab and looks up at him; she's gone faintly pink. "I was asking if you'd like to have dinner, Honda-san," she says. "That is, if you don't have somewhere else to be. I know a good place. You can put your contracts in here," she adds, patting her satchel. "It's clean, I promise."

"Oh," Ryou says. The color in Shizuka's cheeks is deepening to red. The back of his neck feels hot. He fumbles for his files, fingers dragging on concrete.

"Right," he says. "Lead the way."

07. That week Shizuka buys her dinner from various vendors between 1800 and 2200 GMT and knocks on the hull of the Minotaur on her way. She takes Ryou to a different stall each time—"since you've never been," she says. ("Am I getting the tour?" Ryou asks.) "Highlights—the abridged tour!" Shizuka says. It suits Ryou entirely; the last thing he wants to become is a regular of any kind—although, he notes with regret, the congee seller remembers him vividly and broadcasts it in booming tones when they pass his cart: "Well, you look much better today, duck!"

Over tumblers of hot soy milk, Shizuka tells him about today's mystery of the exploding gasket, gestures with her hands at her favorite parts and doubles over laughing twice. Ryou has had ample practice listening to Jounouchi's dock stories and knows exactly when he should laugh, but he's disturbed, hours later, when one of her punch-lines resurfaces in his thoughts and provokes a smile.

"Being a mechanic is kind of like traveling, I think," Shizuka says. "You meet all kinds of people. 'S how I met my roommate.

"You must have friends on the other side of the universe," she says.

"Coworkers," Ryou says, which is true enough.

The third night, sharing a plate of idlis, she asks him about his favorite delivery, and he tells her about the vast cityscape of an alpha cylinder, about the unbelievable quality of the starlight through clean glass panels, about the rooftop gardens with their curling vines, about the sweetness of strange flowers and red petals soft between his fingers like velvet. It's pure fantasy, an amalgam of Gamma Seven and Alpha Sixteen and a painting he saw hanging in an alpha art gallery, years ago: flowers bursting like supernovas in a green field.

Yuugi and company took it in with smiles and sighs; Shizuka looks blank and maintains a polite silence. It makes him nervous; he finishes the story without further embellishment and swallows down the rest of his drink. He supposes he might have been laying it on a bit thick and blames the pijiu, which is warm and foul and went to his head in minutes.

"You're going to think this is weird," Shizuka says, reading _something_ from his face, "but I've never really liked flowers. Or the idea of—well—oh, god, you'll think I'm crazy, but I've never really cared about Earth either."

Ryou thinks that anyone else would have exclaimed. He waits.

Shizuka's smile is wistful. "I like concrete," she says, and the way she speaks makes Ryou think the pijiu has gone to her head, too, "and titanium and gears and cogs and screws. I like rewiring circuits, and I like the sound wires make when I cut them—snip! I like putting my hands into engines that are still just a little bit warm. I bought my first laser-saw when I was fourteen, and the sound of it turning on is one of the best sounds I've ever heard, and that red line of light is the only color I remember." She pours them another round. "I like Ukiyo. I like the way the panels creak and grind and squeal; I fall asleep listening to the whirring of the core. I dream about machines, Honda-kun, not flowers—_kanpai_."

06. On the tenth day, Ryou goes to a nicer bathhouse and borrows a nicer pair of pants to replace the hakama: the lower half of a dark blue tracksuit. When he returns to the docks at dusk, hurrying so he won't miss Shizuka, he finds Mai waiting in front of the Minotaur with her hands jammed in her pockets.

"Jesus, where have you been?" she shouts. "Took you long enough, Inoue—it's fucking freezing!"

"Mai," Ryou says, blank.

"Nice coat!" she shouts.

Mai's jacket is deep plum purple, slick leather, and very tight across her chest. No thigh holster this time: if she's carrying today, the gun is extremely well-hidden. Her hair is loose and tumbling around her shoulders; the Minotaur is glossy and red behind her. She looks like a page out of _Classic Starships_.

She pushes off the side of the Minotaur as Ryou comes closer. "Where'd you go?" she says again, breathing on her fingertips. "_Jesus_, it's cold today."

Ryou finds his voice again. "How did you—"

_The baijiu._

"Nice ship, too," Mai says, patting the hull. "Bet it flies smooth."

"You followed me," Ryou says. "The first night. You—"

"Well," Mai says, "something like that." She smiles, all teeth. "Now we both know where to find each other—isn't that nice?"

Ryou glances at the Minotaur over her shoulder. He won't know she's been inside until she tells him.

"Hungry?" Mai says, ruthless. "I want to introduce you to a friend of mine."

They take a shortcut through the entertainment district and end up in a night market that bridges the whorehouses and center-sphere. Lanterns are strung up along both sides of the street, casting dim orange circles of light over the little shops and colorful outdoor clusters of plastic chairs and tables. Groups of men and women in heavy coats are eating and drinking and laughing. The air is smoky; steam rises from the pots of open-air stands. Overhead in the distance, three glowing high rises of intricate design unfurl into the gray dusk.

Mai laughs at him. "Sorry, kiddo," she says. "Woulda come back sooner to see the look on your face, but I had business."

Ryou looks at his feet, at the scuffed toes of his boots, and presses his tongue against the back of his teeth. Still laughing, Mai leads him to _Baba-Nyonya_, where a girl with messy cinnamon-colored hair is sitting outside at a blue plastic table, sipping barley water.

She looks up and around and smiles at him, and waves, and Ryou feels his mouth twitching and just barely manages to avoid waving back. He'll say hello just as soon as Mai isn't looking.

"Kujaku-san!" Shizuka calls. "Over here!"

Ryou's stomach plunges very unpleasantly toward his feet.

"Hi, kiddo," Mai says, with a flutter of her hand. "Sorry I'm late."

"Don't worry about it," Shizuka says. "I just ordered—nasi goreng for all three of us, is that okay?"

"Sounds delicious," Mai says.

The smile Shizuka gives him is wide with delight. "Hi," she says.

Nausea bubbles up.

"Here's the friend I was telling you about," Mai says. "Inoue, say hello to the best mechanic in Centre East. Shizuka, this is Inoue Ryou—old friend from the squad."

For about a tenth of a second, Ryou thinks about lying. Maybe Mai will go along with it. Maybe Mai will ask him what the hell he's doing and blow out his kneecaps—maybe Mai's had this planned all along, so she can watch him hang himself with the threads of his own lies.

Mai elbows him none too gently in the side.

"Ryou," Ryou says. He tries to smile. "Inoue Ryou. Nice to meet you."

"Shizuka Kawai," Shizuka says, after a beat. That dimple again. "Nice to meet you."

A/N: God knows when I will update next, but I promise you it shall happen.


	4. 03

origins of symmetry  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…

A/N: Gasp! An update!

06. Ryou's first suit weighs three tonnes; it squeals and shudders and has a padded cockpit for the lurches and tumbles; it is beaten and dented and scratched and seats as many as fifteen cadets a day. It is one of the older models, of a line recently extinct: the unfortunate and much derided Käfer, "Maneater" in certain circles, for its general inclination toward to system failure and meltdown in the most critical of moments. By the time Ryou sees his first firefight, the Maneaters have been phased out; he buckles himself into a gleaming new Uraby, and on another occasion jams himself into the seat of a half-smashed Battle Ox, nudging a dead pilot's hands from the controls.

In a wing of mostly Oxen, Urabies, and the occasional Megami suit, Mai's Harpy Lady becomes legendary overnight. The suits arrive from KaibaCorp plants in grey and brown and camouflage black, but some pilots embellish, streaking color across titanium, spray-painting symbols, gluing decals, stenciling numbers, letters, names, profanity. To many the suit becomes an extension of the body, a new arm or leg in need of some kind of personal touch or at the very least another stripe of war paint; to Ryou, the suit is an exoskeleton for the pale fleshy body within, and he cannot see the logic of stamping targets onto his armor.

But Mai's customizations are marvelous and ostentatious: a gunmetal blue paintjob, the samurai helmet with its brilliant red mane, the yellow diamantine sabatons and gauntlets with talons strong enough to pierce titanium, the rattling armor skirt of individual spearpoint pieces, the sharp purple greaves, the flaring ailettes and their matched set of wing decals. And the Harpy scream—!

Ryou thinks this can't possibly be the same suit of cadet legend, this puppet lying crippled and dismembered across the concrete floor of the garage. But there is the famous red mane matted and tangled, the same gunmetal blue chipped and tarnished, the ailettes snapped, the greaves severed and laid out beside the body of the suit.

"Uh-huh," Mai sighs. "Sad, isn't it? We've been gutting it for parts since—oh, I don't know. Hello, my Harpy."

"I'm sorry," Ryou says.

"Yeah, well."

Mai looks tired. Ryou watches as she scrubs a hand over her eyes, smearing eyeliner, and wonders where she's been.

Shizuka's repaired radio stops playing bubblegum pop and blares some kind of trumpet salute. "_Later on in the hour, our very own Zygore's gonna clue you in on some of his favorite recipes for fry-ups, cocktails, mocktails, puddings, and more! It'll give you an idea of what to do with all this goddamn rice. But first the news._"

Outside, Shizuka has stopped walking circles around the Minotaur and is inside examining the engines—

_"Oh my god," Shizuka says, stopping dead. "Oh my _god_! That's your ship?"_

_"Yes," Ryou says, after a moment's hesitation, surprised._

_"Do you know what this is?" Shizuka says, as they reach her. "A Minokentaurus! KaibaCorp only released _twenty_ of these last year—how did you get your hands on this? Fantastic," she murmurs, and reaches out to stroke the blistered red shell._

_"Like your surprise?" Mai says. Ryou glances at her: she's smiling._

_"I _love_ it," Shizuka says. "Kujaku-san! Why didn't you say?"_

_"And ruin the big reveal?" Mai says. "So, think you can fix it?"_

_"Oh, definitely," Shizuka says, patting the hull. "Let me guess," she says, looking at Ryou, and he can't stop himself from shifting uneasily backward, "engine troubles?"_

They've all been lying through their teeth, Shizuka best of all. He's grateful for it, in a way, but it gives him pause: _something not quite right_. Ryou reassesses. He's seen Mai shooting to kill and Shizuka pink-cheeked and grinning over a new set of screwdrivers, about as vicious as a china doll, so how is it harmless Shizuka and deadly Mai ended up eating plates of fried rice together in companionable silence under orange lanterns—?

Unless Mai's weak to dimpling smiles and sweet cinnamon hair—_just like he is_—

Unless Shizuka is just as deadly.

"Listen, about the guns," Mai says, low, "I talked to some people. They'll do it—for a favor."

"What kind of favor?" Ryou says.

"I'll let you know."

"I have limits, Mai," Ryou says, and then winces. It sounds impatient—a ludicrous attempt to threaten.

"Well, Mr. Inoue—"

Mai grins as he tenses and turns.

Shizuka is wiping her hands on a greasecloth. "I don't know what you did," she says, clipped and unhappy. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Can you—?" he says.

She swipes the cloth over her knuckles, fingernails, wrists. "Yes," she says finally. And then, with a strange, cynical smile: "I make no promises." The smile fades. "In all seriousness, Inoue-san, we're looking at multiple part replacements. It's going to cost you."

"I can pay," Ryou says.

She looks at him, sizes him up—

"Five thousand," she says, flatly, and Mai makes a sound like she's choking.

"Okay," Ryou says.

"Jesus _Christ_," Mai says, under her breath.

The radio breaks the silence. "_—nine o'clock and all's reasonably well_—"

"Damn," Mai mutters, stepping back. "Gotta go. Later, kids—have fun and don't stay up too late."

She spins around at the warehouse doors, the gray-black sky huge behind her: "Dockside, same time tomorrow, Inoue. Bring your grocery list."

She's gone. Ryou breathes in and out.

"_—moves into its eighth week_," the radio bubbles. "_We're all on the edge of our seats about this, Bonz included! Whatever happens, 's gonna be a real riot—_"

Shizuka turns the radio off with a click.

"You could buy a new ship with that money," she says, just as flatly as before. "I'll do it for two."

Another breath in. "Sure," Ryou says. "Kawai-san, I—"

He stops at the sudden glint in her eyes.

"So," she says—

_"So," Shizuka says, with cheerful unconcern, "Kujaku-san says you have a job for me."_

_Ryou feels small and cold and sick. "I need," he begins. "My ship. I—"_

_A laughing couple jostle their table, trying to squeeze by. Shizuka stands up and pulls in her chair to make room._

_"What's the matter, hun?" Mai murmurs. She's enjoying this. "Don't tell me you don't know how to talk to pretty girls—"_

"What's your real name?"

Ryou estimates he's been through twenty interrogations in his short career; he could go through another hundred, he thinks, and they would never be anything like this one. He swallows. "Kawai-san, I'm sorry."

"That's a weird name. I think I liked Hiroto better."

"It really is Ryou," Ryou says. "Inoue Ryou. I'm sorry. I didn't think—"

"Mm," Shizuka says, and Ryou shuts up. "Okay, then, Inoue Ryou-kun, I have a few more questions. Are you really an old friend from the squad?"

"Sort of," Ryou says. "We were on the same side and—and everything."

"And you really transport things?"

"Yes." He closes his eyes. "Sometimes."

"Why are you here?"

"There's—something I need to pick up," Ryou says.

"Does Kujaku-san know about it?"

_Probably_, Ryou thinks. He meets her gaze and holds it. "Yes."

Shizuka sighs. "Last question. Do you have a place to stay?"

"I," Ryou says. "My ship—"

"No," Shizuka says. "Not tonight."

"I—I'll find a place." He's seen at least two twenty-four hour bathhouses in center-sphere. In the worst case, he'll go to the clinic, which has windows on the first floor and only two night guards—

"Don't bother," Shizuka says. "There isn't a vacant room on this sphere. There probably won't be for—umph—weeks!" She tosses the radio into her satchel and heaves a toolkit after it. "I have a spare bedroll at my place, though."

"You're—"

"Telling you to sleep over," she says. "Don't get me wrong, Ryou-kun. I just want you where I can keep an eye on you."

"What," he says feebly. "What about your roommate?"

Shizuka frowns at him. "Why would she care?"

"I could—I could be a psycho killer," he says.

"So could I," Shizuka says. "This is Ukiyo, in case you hadn't noticed." She swings the satchel up over one shoulder. "Coming? Can you get that bag?"

"Kawai-san," Ryou says, "thank you."

She waves him off. "Don't worry about it, Ryou Hiroto Honda Sorry."

08. "_Tadaima_," Shizuka says. There's no answer. "No—don't take off your shoes, Ryou-kun—the floor isn't clean." She locks the door but doesn't slide the bolt home. "Hit the lights, please."

Ryou finds the switch. The room is windowless, smaller than the Minotaur's cargo hold and made smaller still by the pile of metallic junk that seems to be growing from the southern wall. There's a fold-out poster of a starship on the wall, too: a silver St. Joan gleaming in a darkened hangar. One threadbare pallet lies on the floor. It's bitingly cold.

Shizuka sets her bags down on the kotatsu in the center of the room and hauls several pillows, a space heater, and an enormous thermos out of the mess.

"Bathroom's downstairs and to the left," she says, flipping the switch on what looks like a lantern out of a children's story: a squat black thing with thin looping handle. It casts a dim circle of yellow light into the room. She sets it on the kotatsu. The space heater rattles to life.

There are, Ryou notices, entirely too many shoes by the door. Black and red heels, obscenely high; they don't look like anything Shizuka would wear. Right—on the large side too. The absent roommate's, he realizes—work shoes?

"Have a seat," Shizuka says, pulling an assortment of little metal instruments from her vest pockets. "It'll warm up soon." She retrieves the radio from her satchel.

"Ah—yes," Ryou says, dazed.

"_A cry of thirst_, _a heart with flowers blooming inside—just take my—_"

Shizuka turns the dial.

"—_a good beat and a rusty rhythm_," a woman sings. "_Respect!_ _Boys, show me courage—_"

Ryou sits cross-legged by the heater and examines the pile. He spots several alarm clocks, two more radios, masses of tangled wires, several magazines, flat pieces of black plastic, graphite pencils, an ancient television set bleeding multicolored circuitry, a model starfighter and three toy suits—

"There should be some cups in there."

Ryou counts four. He fishes two out from a nest of wires and sets them on the kotatsu. Shizuka fills them with hot water.

"Thanks," Ryou says.

"_Chizu egaite_," Shizuka hums. "_Shizumanai taiyou_. There are spare sheets in the other room, Ryou-kun. _Himitsu no rakuen._"

The next room is even smaller, rectangular, one corner taken up by a black closet. A window on the far wall lets in a slit of gray light; the pallets and sheets are folded up beneath it. There are boxes stacked by the door. _Garlic_, one reads. Ryou peels it open: cans. He goes to the closet, opens it, and is greeted by a sequined red dress. The roommate's again, he decides.

He falls asleep to the sound of Shizuka methodically dismantling the television.

09. Ryou wakes up to watery light and painful cold filtering in from an open door. He has no idea what time it is. He can hear Shizuka breathing somewhere to his right, soft and peaceful. There is a gun pressed against his cheekbone.

_If it were just me, I'd be with you in milliseconds, I swear, Inoue. A year ago—definitely. _To hell with the Alliance!_ and all that. But not now. I'm not flying solo anymore. I have people here. I can't just take off and never look back._

"Oh god," he whispers.

"Yeah," Mai agrees. "_Oh god_. _Oh god_ is exactly right. I cannot fucking believe this. She _brought you home_? You let her _bring you home_? Oh, Christ."

"_You're_ her roommate," Ryou says, in dull shock.

"Hell fucking yes, I'm her roommate," Mai hisses. She doesn't put the gun away. "I said I'd help you, Inoue, I fucking promised—you of all people should know these things don't happen overnight. I worked as _goddamn _fast as I could. I can't _believe _this. I can't believe you would do this. I can't believe you would take advantage of—"

"What?" Ryou rasps.

She jabs the gun harder into his cheek. "_You heard me_."

"Wh—oh—_no_," Ryou says. He can feel his blood pulsing against the gun. "Mai!"

Shizuka stirs—she's fallen asleep over the television, Ryou realizes—and mumbles in her sleep. Mai swears under her breath.

"I'm sorry," Ryou whispers. "I didn't know."

"You get her _any_ more involved in this _shit_," Mai says, soft and dangerous, "and I'll kill you."

She holsters the gun and steps quietly away. Ryou hears the deadbolt sliding into place and the rustling of clothing, and then Mai comes back, moving quick and easy through Shizuka's scattered debris. She slides into the empty futon beside his and settles down to sleep without another word.

Ryou lies as still as he can. He thinks, stupidly, _This explains the shoes._

10. Shizuka is long gone—to the docks and the Minotaur and wherever it is spare machine parts are bartered and sold on Ukiyo—when Mai wakes him, all gentleness and contrition. He notes gratefully that she appears to be unarmed before crawling from bedroll to kotatsu, where breakfast is waiting: two stale mantou, a vitamin pill, and as much boiling hot water as he can drink.

Mai mans the kettle in silence. Ryou looks around: the junk pile hasn't become any less chaotic overnight, fed now by Mai's boots and various articles of black clothing.

"Yes, you can stay," Mai says, when Ryou has bitten and chewed the last dry bit of mantou and felt it lodge somewhere in his esophagus. "And I apologize for the, uh, rough treatment last night—"

"No," Ryou says, startled, "don't worry about it."

"—I was dead tired yesterday, and you surprised me. So. Sorry, Inoue."

"It's fine," Ryou says. "Really. I wouldn't have done it, if I'd known." God, he wouldn't have, even if he were back in the alley with Bakura angling a knife between his ribs! Though he hadn't had much choice in the end, had he, with his ship sitting gutted in a garage, and Shizuka watching him with steady eyes, waiting for him, maybe willing to forgive. . .funny, that.

He shakes it off: there are more pressing matters at hand. "Mai—the guns."

"I did what I could, but they're going to come slower than you want," Mai says. "But when they do come—like I said, it'll take a little effort on your part."

"What exactly is it they—your people—want me to do?" he asks, warily.

Unexpectedly, Mai laughs. "The impossible," she says. "They—" her eyes dance at him "—my people—want you to stand around and look menacing."

_Look menacing_—in other words keeping a straight face while someone else does all the intimidating—all the heavy lifting, and heavy slugging, and heavy breaking—?

And hands clasped angelically behind the back, of course—

"But," Mai says, "if you fork over that five thou, I'm sure they can find someone else for the job." She looks at him, gaze sharpening: "But I'm also sure you don't have five thou burning a hole in your pocket. So what the hell was that last night?"

_Not my pocket. Seto Kaiba's pocket_—

Kaiba wants Bakura because he wants Maximillian Pegasos' secrets and the secret of his realm of shadows, all property now of the man who cut Pegasos' throat and razed his empire to the ground—_Kaiba would very much like to know_—and Kaiba will pay the aforementioned five thousand because five thousand is loose change—

But Kaiba—the voice in his head is all Ishtal now, desert-dry—wants _results_, Corporal Inoue. And results you have not given him.

"She's real cute, I'll give you that," Mai says. "But I didn't think you swung that way, Inoue." She looks distant; they're both remembering Valon now, Ryou knows. Then the dreamy distance focuses. "I didn't think you swung at all, actually—"

He coughs. "This—the—headquarters wants this guy before the Alliance can get to him. They want him very badly. So they're—"

"Bullshit," Mai says. "If they wanted him that bad, they'd've sent over a whole damn team."

_A whole damn team—in other words, not _you_, Inoue_.

"It's sensitive—"

"_Bullshit_," Mai says again. "You're expendable. _Who can we throw away today—?_"

Pain blooming in his chest—but a muted ache, dulled now like all his various hurts—and tightening into frustration. He doesn't understand why she won't let it go.

"It doesn't matter," he says. Live or die, the planets and colonies will keep on turning. But he supposes stars and planets have stopped turning for Valon.

"It doesn't matter," he repeats. "Is there anything we can do today?"

"Nope," Mai says, shaking the last few drops of water into his cup. "_You_ can sit pretty. Or go for a walk. It's my day off and I'm going back to bed."

11. Ryou jumps as Mai throws his boots down in front of him. "Boring," she drawls. "Let's get a drink, yeah? I'm thirsty. Shiz'-chan, wanna come?"

"No thanks," Shizuka says, without looking up from the television. "I have some wiring—"

Mai shrugs. "All right. Coming, Inoue?"

"Er—I should really—" He breaks off at the look in Mai's eyes.

"What is it?" Shizuka says, low.

Mai is already moving toward the door, swearing under her breath. Ryou follows. He feels sleep-heavy and sick, not at all ready to tackle anyone.

Mai signals with her right hand. _I'll handle it._

Ryou nods_. Right_, he thinks, _where is Mai's bloody _gun—

He kicks open the door and Mai lunges. There is a brief scuffle and she straightens with the eavesdropper in a blood choke. A boy with black hair: bent backwards, eyes bulging, red-faced, and—_what?—_clutching a toy suit shaped like a monkey.

Ryou's presence seems to upset him more than the chokehold. He stares at Ryou. Ryou stares back. The monkey hangs limply between them.

"Ryuuji," Mai says, releasing him. "I should have known."

"Good evening to you, too, Jesus Christ," Ryuuji says. He rubs his neck. "Hi. And you are?"

"Yes," Ryou says, slowly. "Inoue Ryou, please treat me well."

The green of Ryuuji's eyes seems to sharpen; Ryou meets his stare with what he hopes is a neutral smile.

"I was. Ehm. Just leaving. With, um. With Mai."

"Were you?" The boy smiles just enough to show his teeth. "Run along, then."

"Oh, give it a goddamned rest, Ryuuji," Mai says. "Ryou, this is Otogi Ryuuji, who seems to think he lives here. He's useless."

"What? I complete you, Mai," Otogi Ryuuji says. "It hurts me to hear you say that."

"What do you want?" Mai says, long-suffering. "It's past curfew."

"Like anyone really cares. Is Shizuka-chan here? It's Tristan, he's blown a fuse or something." He brandishes the monkey.

"This couldn't have waited until morning?"

"I guess I panicked," Otogi says, grinning. He raises his voice. "I think he's _dead_."

"What?" Shizuka exclaims. "Otogi-kun, this is the third time—bring him here, let's have a look."

Otogi smirks—the smirk is directed entirely at him—and brushes past, robotic monkey in tow.

"Uuugh," Mai says, rolling her eyes. "I rue the day I let this kid in my house."

"Mai," Ryou says, slowly, "is that—"

"Huh?" Mai says, distracted. "What's that?"

Ryou hesitates. He looks out into the gray dusk, at billboards flickering pink while the red-eyed Worms rise like an enormous black wall in the distance.

"Oh, balls," Mai says suddenly. She takes a step backward, spins, and ducks indoors.

"What is it?" Ryou says. Mai doesn't answer. He scans the empty skyline again: nothing.

He pivots. Shizuka and Otogi are seated at the kotatsu, the monkey spread-eagled between them, its stomach pried open, wires spilling out like intestines. Ryou steps inside—and stumbles over Mai's heels, lying discarded in the doorway.

"Wh—"

Mai strides out of the next room—black boots now—pulling her hair into a long tail. As her jacket lifts, Ryou catches a glimpse of the Baby Dragon, a dusty stripe of orange in its side holster.

"Gonna have to take a rain check on the bar crawl, Inoue," she says, nudging the heels out of the way.

"Sure," Ryou says. "But—"

"Cover for me, yeah?" Mai whispers. She raises her voice. "Yo, Shiz'-chan, I'm heading out!"

"Oh—okay! Have fun!" Shizuka doesn't look up; neither does Otogi, Ryou notices, whose eyes are intent on Shizuka's face.

"Where are you going?" Ryou says, low.

"Downtown," Mai says. She sounds vaguely irritated. "Someone's stirring up shit. And it was my fucking day off, too—look, just sit tight. I won't be long." She starts to move.

"_Wait_—what about Otogi?" Ryou asks.

"What about Otogi?" Mai says. She grins, sudden and wolfish. "Oh, are you worried? Keep an eye on him if you're worried. Ta, Inoue."

"Mai—"

The door slams.

"Oh—you aren't going, Ryou-kun?" Shizuka says from behind him.

"_Ryou-kun?_" says Otogi indignantly.

"No," Ryou says finally. "I have a—I'm—uh, I need to map my next route."

"Aw, you're going to work?" Shizuka says. "I finished up the TV yesterday. We can watch The Fire Princess of Tsurugi if you don't mind waiting a bit."

"_Fire Princess_—what about those Cute Sister tapes I got you?" Otogi says.

"Cute Sister?" Shizuka makes a face. "Really?"

"Fire Princess is so melodramatic and predictable," Otogi says. "All that 'heart of the magic' crap—yeah, right! Lady Luck is no one's bitch. Someone's cheating. You know what I mean, _Ryou-kun_?"

"I—"

Shizuka interrupts. "I didn't fix the TV so we could watch Cute Sister—"

"What do you have against mindless fun?"

"What do you have against shows with substance?"

They're smiling at each other—

"I've," Ryou says. He raises his voice and hears the sound of it humming in the hollows of his skull, against his forehead and cheekbones: "I've never seen Fire Princess before."

12. He dozes off while the Fire Princess of Tsurugi and her trusty robotic monkey sidekick are being besieged by suit-mation robots in an abandoned missile factory—soft gentle damp is all around him, the sound of Otogi and Shizuka bickering, laughter surrounding him, and he's sinking, lower and lower. . .

"I'll never die," Bakura murmurs—there is no knife at his ribs now, only Bakura, the black eyes and parted mouth. Ryou laughs, leans back. He can feel the warmth of Bakura through his flight suit, the imprint of Bakura's fingers.

"Kiss me," Ryou says—

He jolts awake, gasping and disoriented. Quick check: Otogi and Shizuka are dead to the universe. Slowly he untangles himself from Otogi's sprawling leg.

_Bakura, standing beside him in the hangar after a battle, pushing him down and licking a hot circle at the center of his chest_—

_God!_

He fumbles for the tea kettle—drinks a cold and acrid mouthful, gargles and swallows. He creeps to the slit window and pushes his cheek against the cold panes, and tries not to think about hot hands on his thighs, pressing them apart. Minutes click by. He has lost track of time, only knows it must be late from the gritty pain of every blink.

The knowledge that Bakura lives and will continue to live, in this galaxy or the next, lurks heavy at the back of his mind, displacing fantasies of Earth—dammed up knowledge, but there are cracks; Bakura is already seeping into his every thought. They have been bound together by some scheme of Brigadier Ishtal; they will meet again and again until one of them is dead.

Ryou wonders if the novelty of their acquaintance will someday grow blunt and dull, if encountering Bakura will someday be as easy and routine as—as Saturday nights with Yuugi-tachi. _Hello again, Bakura_, and _please put down that knife_—

He thinks about Bakura—he thinks about Bakura and he can't stop—

13. "_Good morning, Ukiyo!_"

Ryou, tumbling through cold wet clouds toward the jungles of Earth, returns abruptly to the present, where he is flat on his back on the floor with a sheet pulled up to his chin. The left side of his face feels swollen and hot; his mouth is dry, and everything else is stiff and sore and prickling with cold. Mai's black boots come gradually into focus.

"_—put a date on the Hattori trial, first of September—I expect they'll order the wanker back to his estate on Alpha Four under heavy guard. Donno about you, Bonz, but I certainly hope—_"

"'Morning," Mai says.

Ryou raises himself carefully to one arm and sits up in gingerly and creaking increments. Various muscles protest.

"Sorry," he says, and pauses at his voice: hoarse and low, the voice of a stranger. "Stiff."

"_—as always respectable folk are cautioned to keep their pale, law-abiding arses indoors_—"

"_Never have any fun that way—_"

"_You got it, Zygore. Sod respectability, yeah?_"

"_Fuckit!_"

"_Anything to add, Bonz? Anything? Anything at all?_"

Crackling radio silence.

"When—" There's something in his eye—he rubs at it with a knuckle and fights back a yawn. "When did you get back?"

"No idea. Bugfuck o'clock." Mai lowers herself to the ground with a groan and stares up at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes. No make-up now. She's wearing a T-shirt and last night's black jeans and—_ohfuck_—Valon's ring around her neck. She's probably always been wearing it, Ryou realizes—dangling between her breasts, tucked under her shirts and her corsets—

Did Valon give it to her, he wonders, or did she pull it off Valon's finger and put it in her pocket—was it after the shootout? Sometime in the last three years? Mai shifts; the ring spins and flashes.

Mai is still talking, a low continuous murmur. He drags his eyes upward. "It was supposed to be a routine run—a couple hours at the most—this fucking quarantine." She sighs. "Wish I could sleep."

"You have time," Ryou says. Shizuka has gone to the docks already, it seems, but he's sure it's still morning—

Mai shakes her head. "Too fucking wired right now." Breath. "What about you, huh, Inoue?"

"Me?" He tries to kill the second yawn, too, but it pries his jaws open, wider, wider, squeezing tears from his eyes. He wipes them away with his sleeve. "Sorry—"

"Yeah, you." She knocks their shoulders together, companionably, grins. Her lips are chapped, pale without lipstick. "You look tired. Late night?"

Pieces of another dream, faded now, slot neatly back into place. Ryou can feel the blush working its way, red hot, into his cheeks.

"I didn't sleep well," he says.

"Sucks. Not because of this moron here, I hope," Mai says.

Ryou follows her gaze to the prone snoring body beside him, hair unbound now and ink-black against the bedroll—_this moron here—_

_Otogi awake is tall and lithe, dressed in black and red, with a sharply handsome face and inky black hair tied back in a high ponytail. Gray light snags on various adornments: a red headband, quirky earrings in the shape of dice. But what catches Ryou's attention and holds it is the tattoo: a single black line, running smooth and sharp down his left cheek._

Mai clears her throat. Ryou looks up.

"He can be a pain in the ass sometimes," Mai says. There's a _but_ in there somewhere, Ryou thinks. Mai isn't looking at him; she's watching Otogi's face, smoothed in sleep, and the pink mouth parting in snuffling breaths, breathing shallowly through her own mouth. Ryou can't parse the look in her eyes, but he thinks it must be some parts _fond_.

"No," Ryou says. "It was fine. We—we watched TV."

Asleep, Otogi's looks are softer, the tattoo starkly black and angular against his skin.

"Mai," Ryou says quietly, "what's a duke of the Black Crowns doing on Ukiyo?"

_Never mind Ukiyo—Ukiyo is the part that makes sense—what's a duke of the Black Crowns doing sleeping on your floor?_

Mai is silent. Then she sighs, resigned. "I told him those fucking tats were going to get him into trouble. Yeah, I noticed you noticed." Pained: "Jesus, Inoue, couldn't you tell I didn't want you to bring it up? No—_don't you fucking apologize_. I _will_ smack you."

He should leave, he knows—get out before he sucks them any further into this operation. A new place to sleep, a new mechanic. It won't be too hard to do, and Mai will help him, because she wants him gone—out of her life before he and the Brigadier can tear this incarnation of Mai Valentine and her people to shreds.

He tells himself it won't come to that.

"Anyway," Mai says, "I never asked him."

"Lying low," Ryou suggests.

"Starting over," Mai says. She pins him with a look. "You know exactly what he's doing here—_no, _don't bullshit me! I know what went down on Alpha Twelve last year. The poor kid has nothing left."

He meets her eyes and then looks away, startled. "You've been keeping tabs on—on me?"

"I've been keeping tabs on the whole damn outfit," Mai says. "I like knowing what the Brig is up to—so I know when it's time to pack up and run like hell."

14. _"What is it?" Mai's voice issues, muffled, from a tangle of sheets. "What is it she wants so bad, huh? Come on, Inoue. You can tell me. Dead women tell no tales, and all that."_

_Only her left foot is visible, toenails short and red._

_"Not 'what,' Mai," he says. " '_Who_'—"_

He borrows Honda again: Honda Hiroto—silent apologies to the real Honda, light years away and probably closing up for the night—is on Ukiyo on unspecified business, looking for a man he used to know: a man in red, a man with the same white hair. Might have touched down a month ago, three weeks ago, give or take.

He doesn't ask too many questions, but he hangs around, watches. Ryou wants to know about the black ships and Karita's exact whereabouts onboard, but Honda doesn't ask. Honda doesn't leer or swagger (the way Valon did); he looks a little sick, actually, thin and stooped and shaky. His eyes are sunken in his skull and there's a bruise healing green-yellow on his cheek. The gray light washes him out, makes him fade, and the only thing anyone can remember about Honda Hiroto after a few hours is the white hair, or maybe the way he kept one arm tight to his chest, the hand immobile, curling under like a claw.

Honda doesn't press. He haunts the docks until everyone else heads inland for supper, and then he disappears.

_It doesn't make sense—_

_ No one's seen Bakura. _That_ makes sense: hair-dyes, hair-cuts, costume changes—all par for the course._

_ What doesn't make sense is the gut certainty that Bakura will look exactly as he did in the throne-room of Baek—_

_ And the certainty that Ryou will know him at once—_

In the end, it's Inoue Ryou, dock worker and all-around nice boy, stopping at a stall to buy his mates dinner, with his white hair hidden under a beanie and his arm hidden under his coat, who gets Honda Hiroto his first big break.

The vendor likes nice boys like Ryou. She clucks over the bruise.

"Docks," Ryou says, by way of explanation, with a small, rueful smile.

"Got clocked by one of those arms, didn't you," the vendor says, shaking her head. "Could have had your skull knocked in! Safety violations like mad!"

He watches her scoop idlis from a steaming vat: one, two, three, four, f—

"I hope you weren't out there when that suit crash-landed. 'S a wonder your mum didn't make you quit then and there!"

Nice-boy Ryou jerks into alertness, feels his heart thunder to life inside him—and fades away altogether. Just Ryou now, mouth parting, good hand clenched.

"_What_—?"

She takes the sudden sharpness of his voice for shock—which is close enough, really. "That's right," she says. "Right out of space! Big white monster—it's a miracle only a few people were hurt. You didn't hear about it?"

_Big white monster—_

Honda Hiroto was asking all the wrong questions!

She takes his silence for shock, too, nods kindly at him. "Listen, _beti_, you want safer work, you take the shuttle and go find my brother-in-law on Platform Six. Ashvin Ajith. It'll have to wait until this mess with those Worm ships is over, of course. But a nice boy like you, you'll get the job, no trouble—"

He barely hears her.

_Right out of space—big white monster—!_

"So you won't have to worry about coming back to your mum with your arms and legs all broken to bits. Ashvin runs a safe platform—worst they had was a few fingers lost in the threshing, and that was ten years ago—you look into it, _beti_."

The niceness reinstates itself. "Thank you," Ryou says politely. "I'll think about it."

"Good boy," she says, smiling. "Here you go—"

_Big white monster—_

_ The Necrofear!_

15. Oh, but this doesn't make sense either, that a suit like the Necrofear—_big white monster_—could have evaporated into thin air. _But it has_.

The warehouse is cavernous at dusk. He ducks under the half-shut garage door, into the gloom. There is a light at the far end, bouncing and twitching, glinting off the scattered pieces of the dismembered Harpy.

"Kawai-san?"

"Over here!" she calls, and then a small pale hand flits into the jumping light, waves. He hurries toward it.

Shizuka is sitting at her workbench, pushing at a tiny square of metal with a set of pliers. The light is emanating from her headpiece: a flashlight strapped to her forehead like crude spelunking gear.

"Kawai-san, it's—" he hesitates "—it's Ryou."

She doesn't turn around. "What's up?" she says, bending close to inspect her handiwork.

He sets the idlis on the concrete by her right foot. "I brought your dinner. Uh—I'm not interrupting, am I?"

"Mm."

"Er. Question for you." He feels like he's breathing down her neck—he wishes she would turn and look at him. His tongue feels clumsy in his mouth. "When you stripped the Harpy Lady down for parts—did you sell any of it?"

Murmured: "Sure we did—that was the whole point, _Honda-san_." She pushes hard with the pliers; Ryou cringes. "The motherboard, the optics, the brakes—lots of stuff. People will pay a lot for suit components."

"Because suits are rare—in these parts—?"

"Uh huh."

"So if someone else gutted a suit and sold the pieces, you'd take notice—right?"

"Mmhm."

Right, then. "Kawai-san, I need your help."

"Oh?" She swivels around. "What—" the _else_ hangs unspoken between them "—do you want?"

"Have you seen anything unusual? In the last few weeks?"

He has her attention now, at least. "Hmm," Shizuka says, setting the metal square down. "Last few weeks, huh? Well—okay, strictly speaking, it's not _legal_, so we don't go around announcing all the new stuff. You have to know the right people—get the right messages. Or send the right messages. Like a fairy market."

_Fairy market—?_

Never mind! "Do you? Know the right people, that is?"

"I _am_ the right people," Shizuka says, dimpling beautifully up at him. "Kidding. I'm not a big name yet—which is a good place to be, on Ukiyo. Siegfried and Leonheart—I _know_—those aren't their real names—Siegfried and Leonheart come to mind first, because they're flashy. But almost anyone will do it, for the commish. It's a lot of money."

"But if you wanted it done well—professionally—quietly—"

"Then you'd want Solomon. He's the best." She beams at him. "_For now_."

"Not his real name either?"

"Probably not. I go by 'Serenity,' in case you're wondering—" She seems to catch herself. "Why're you asking, anyway? Don't tell me you have a broken suit lying around—_reactor_ trouble this time? Does Kujaku-san know?"

"She doesn't. And I don't. But word on the street is someone else does—_did_," he corrects himself. "The white suit that crashed last month—did you hear about it?"

"Hear about it? I _heard_ it," Shizuka says. "Heard it, felt it, but didn't get to see it—it was gone the next day, like—" Her eyes widen. "_Oh_. . ."

"Yes," Ryou says. "Like someone chopped it up and made it disappear. . ."

"—piece by piece," Shizuka finishes. "And you want to know if I've seen the pieces."

"Yes, that's part of it," Ryou says. "I also want to know if _you_ know who sold them. Solomon, then?"

"No, _not Solomon_," she says softly—almost dreamily. "Hang on—" She stands abruptly, pivots, and darts into the shadows, throwing up a wobbling beam of light into the dusty air—then nothing.

Ryou stares into the darkness.

"It's funny—" Her voice ripples back to him. He hears her rummaging through spare parts. "I was _so_ disappointed. . .when I heard the suit was gone. I asked everyone about it—all the dock vendors." _Bang! _ "But since I'd never seen it—how banged up it might have been—I assumed the pilot had taken off the second they figured out everything was in working order—to avoid any trouble, right? I _never_ thought—" _bang! bang! _"—here it is—"

_Here what is?_

"Here—" Shizuka says, and then he sees her again, stepping over a pile of junk, the headpiece casting eerie shadows. She's holding out a smooth, adularescent white disc—like an overgrown fish scale. It flares as she rotates it, throwing light into the gaping darkness of the warehouse. "A piece like this, you mean?"

He frowns at it. "What is it?"

She smiles. "Yeah—I didn't recognize what it was at first either. It's a heat tile, but not like one I've ever seen before. Popped up for sale about a month ago, along with a few other bits and bobs. I've been meaning to take it apart."

"Who—?"

Her smile dims. "Well—that's the thing, I don't know, actually. Picked it up at one of the regular shops, but I didn't ask about provenance—it's not polite, you know?"

"Can you trace it?"

"Sure," Shizuka says, "I can trace the seller. If that's what you want me to do. But, Ryou-kun, you have to tell me why."


	5. 04

origins of symmetry  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…

A/N: Holy shit, it's part three. Well, part one of part three. Or something. Em-dash abuse from this point on, fair warning.

Thanks for your review, Pork Steak the Grande!

* * *

_I am a fever, I am a fever  
__I ain't born typical._

—The Kills, "U.R.A. Fever"

00. _CRUADHLAOICH, ALASDAIR, alias ALISTER_, _alias AMELDA_.

01. Their prisoner isn't talking—yet. But he's out of stories now, mangled his last cover, and he's staring up with belligerence in his eyes and nary a sentence in his mouth.

Ryou hates when they go silent. He's done it before, in the beginning, gone to a place deep in his head and bitten the insides of his cheeks until they were swollen and bloody, and now—with the scars of experience on his body—he babbles obligingly, although he also makes it a point to avoid getting caught. Standing in the background in this dingy warehouse with his feet firmly planted, his face in shadows, the wasted arm crossed painfully behind his good one, he thinks about the prison guards of the Baekan palace, and wonders what he looks like to Jeong Joon Ho sweating it out in the hot seat now, where Ryou should be sitting with tied-up hands and a bleeding nose.

"Go on, tell us—there's a love."

But Alister doesn't look anything like the Baekan vizier, Mahaad, who was tall and muscular and beautifully adorned where Alister and Alister's red hair have all but disappeared, though his face and skeletal hands gleam like half-moons in the dark. The fingers of these hands are curled carefully on either side of the unfortunate mole, and Alister is leaning far forward, so that the long white face and its dull gray eyes looked into his.

"Don't do this to me, June old boy," the white face whispers. "Know you can make me happy, Joony—just say the words. Let you go free if you make me happy—free as a bird, yeah, Jeong Joon Ho? You understand, don't you, eh, love?"

June seems to be considering. His is the kind of loyalty bought by the regularity of paychecks and the size of illicit bonuses, and maybe the sad little thrill one gets from pawing the boss's best boy from time to time—yeah, Alister's seen him—lovely little boy, isn't he. But he's blown now; he's in a real fix, is Joony boy. The Big Man wants blood, Joony. Alister keeps on whispering, while the white face presses impossibly closer without ever touching, the dull eyes do not blink: Jeong Joon Ho is a clever customer, isn't he? Bully for him if he makes it back in one piece, but if he doesn't—and he won't—his pal the Xinfeng _laoban_ will hardly move stars and planets to have him returned. Time to make a deal, innit? Yeah, Joony?

_He'll talk_, Ryou thinks, wills it with his teeth clenched. He'll talk now and there will be no need for further convincing, for Ryou to hold his arms down while Alister goes at him with a cigarette or knife.

Yes: _Joony boy_ swallows—Ryou sees his throat bobbing in the dark—and he slumps, and the white hands lift, and Alister steps back—

_He'll talk_—

He screams.

Ryou jerks and stares at him in total bewilderment. No one's touched him—no one's even come close; Alister, in fact, is still backing away. Then he sees the blood.

For a beat everyone stands in frozen confusion, except for June, whose scream chokes off into whimpering; Alister's two thugs exchange glances, and the big blond one starts forward, flexing, and stops, obeying the sharp motion of Alister's white hand.

Ryou steadies his own breathing under the shivering, ragged sound of June's breaths, curls and uncurls the fingers of his good hand.

Finally, Alister swears; it sounds punched out of him. "Was that necessary," he says, struggling for smooth contempt and sounding shaken instead, and Ryou turns to see Mai. No—_not_ Mai: this is the Iron Bitch, through and through, and the muzzle of her Baby Dragon is still glowing.

"Out," she says.

"Fucksake, I was about to break him," Alister protests.

"I don't care," Mai says. "You are wasting my time, you are wasting the boss's time. All of you: _Get out_."

Alister swears again. "Woman—"

Mai ignores him. She strides toward June, who cries out at the sight of her, and grabs him by his hair, jerking his head back and pressing the Baby Dragon to his thigh. She croons into his ear; he sobs.

"Inoue," Mai murmurs, "get out and close the door when you go."

02. Mai—just Mai now, her footfalls soft, the rigid set of her shoulders gone—emerges some thirty minutes later, the Baby Dragon holstered and not a hair out of place. After a confirming nod from Alister, Alister's thugs shoulder past her and gone to deal with the—body, Ryou thinks, and then, unable to shake his uneasiness: _it's too quiet in there_.

The door closes, and Alister snarls.

"That was _my_ bloody interrogation."

"Really?" Mai says. "Looked like you were about to ask him to dinner. Thought I should cut in before you did something you'd regret."

"Fuck you," Alister says. He shrugs with his hands in his pockets and Ryou envies the ease of the movement. "No reason to shoot the poor bastard."

They step into the darkened street together. Ryou feels rather than sees Mai and Alister fall into line in front of him. They walk—quickly, but taking care to soften the ringing noise of their heeled shoes on concrete.

"We'll have to shift the goods," Mai's voice says coolly.

"Never mind the goods," Alister says. "What was that all about? Poor bastard," he says again. "It wasn't fair."

"Since when do you care about playing fair?" Mai says.

"_You_ do," Alister snaps. "You _should_. Valon always—"

"Not that again," Mai groans. "Lay off, will ya? Valon's out of it. What Valon thinks doesn't matter."

Alister sucks in a long breath; Ryou, standing beside him now, sees his chest swelling with it under a sudden shock of lamplight. Then he blows it out, and changes the subject. "Well, we can't do nothing, not under the noses of that bleedin' armada."

Mai breathes in too. They enter a well-lit side street; the guns go away, Alister slouches and Mai tucks her hand into the crook of Ryou's good arm: three friends out for a midnight stroll.

03. Alister peels off first, saluting his farewell ("Later, Loudmouth—cheeribye") as he disappears into a brawling crowd on a street of brothels. Mai, arm slung around Ryou's shoulders now, draws them both to a stop in front of _The Kunoichi, Restaurant and Bar_. The door is slightly ajar: Ryou hears faint music over a low continuous hum of voices.

"Thirsty?" Mai asks. She squeezes his shoulders, says companionably, "C'mon, have a drink."

They're standing cheek to cheek. Mai's is warm and powder-soft. Ryou thinks he can feel a pulse beating; he's not sure whose it is.

_Valon's out of it. What Valon thinks doesn't matter_.

"C'mon," Mai says again, cajoling.

Ryou wants to return to the apartment, wants it almost painfully: to sit beside Shizuka and Otogi in the flickering, freezing light, his ears full of their banter and their laughter. He follows Mai through the door.

"Baby!" Jean Claude shouts. "Oh," he says next, with stagey disappointment, "you brought your friend."

"Hi, Jean," Mai says. "Cold out tonight."

"Fucking cold," Jean Claude replies, and then he leans down and says loudly, "I think you've had enough, buddy. You too. Scoot. Go on!" To Mai again: "Sit down, baby, lemme warm you up." He taps the newly-empty places in front of him.

Mai takes the leftmost with a sigh. "Thanks, Jean."

"Anytime, my darling," Jean Claude says, passing her a steaming glass of clear liquid. "How 'bout you, buddy? What can I get ya? Lemonade? Milk?"

"Jean," Mai says. "Get him a beer."

"I was just asking." Jean-Claude comes back with a green bottle and sets it down disdainfully. Ryou pushes the bottle away. "Past his bedtime, looks like."

"_Jean_," Mai says. "Fuck off."

Jean Claude smiles. "You need me, you holler, sweetheart."

* * *

Mai drinks and drinks and says finally, dreamily, "Alister doesn't even like me, you know. Hates my guts."

"Yes?" Ryou says.

"Hates 'em," Mai says, smiling at Ryou over the top of her glass. "Shoot me in the back any day. But he can't now. Know why?"

"Yes," Ryou says, and relents and says, "No. Why?"

"Valon," Mai says with triumph rich and warm in her voice. She slaps her hand on the countertop, rattling glass. "That's right. Valon. Alister's head over heels in love with Valon. See it ten parsecs away. Pathetically in love with him. So Alister's watching my back now, 'stead of shooting it. 'Cause Valon said I'm good so I must be good, and Valon's as good as dead so there's no arguing with him. Is there. Alister's a royal fucking headcase. Gets on my fucking nerves."

"Why did you shoot him, Mai?" Ryou says quietly.

Mai looks at him. Her eyes are wet, glowing. "I hate skunks," she says.

Jean Claude reappears with another glass. "This is the last one, babe," he says. "Closing soon."

Mai gives an absent nod.

Jean Claude doesn't move off yet. "Go home and get some sleep," he says, "and don't let me see you here again tomorrow."

* * *

There are more people milling about in the frozen twilight. It must be near to morning, Ryou thinks, or the vague half-light that passes for dawn on Ukiyo. There are people gathered in clusters about slow-burning fires, warming themselves and talking. Their voices are angry and their noses and cheeks red. Walking by them, Ryou feels like a ghost. Even Mai's hair has been reduced to gray translucence.

For a moment Ryou misses the sight of her—of Mai out of the gray twilight, grinning at him over a green-painted café table, eyes and skin and hair golden during a long afternoon in an Alpha colony: Mai before Ukiyo; Mai before Valon.

"Don't," Mai says suddenly. She sounds soberer now, and quieter.

"What?" Ryou says.

"Don't put me on one of your fucking pedestals," Mai says.

"I didn't know I had pedestals," Ryou says.

"Jesus. Don't play dumb. Valon was wrong about me and so are you. We're all skunks in this business and I deserve a bullet in the shoulder as much as the next skunk. Stop thinking I need to be rescued or brought back to civilization or wherever the fuck you come from. I belong here."

"Okay," Ryou says.

"You're so goddamn colorless," Mai says. "All that time we worked together running errands for that bitch, I never knew what the fuck you wanted. I don't think _you_ know."

Her voice rings down the street, but no one turns to look at Ryou or Mai as they stand facing one another, Mai visibly pale with fury, even in this dim light, and Ryou staring at her.

"I know now," Ryou says. He says it breathlessly. His face heats, high on the right cheekbone, like she's spun around and hit him. "I know now, Mai."

"Bullshit. You're the hollowest of hollow men. You give me the creeps."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't _fucking_ apologize. Why don't you get mad for once. Defend yourself. Jesus H. Christ."

She stalks ahead. Clouds of breath billow away in the air: Ryou breathes them back in and closes his mouth, burrows more deeply into his borrowed coat.

04. Ryou jerks awake, rumpled and gasping in the shock of cold that awaits him outside the blanket. For a moment he thinks the sand of Baek is in his eyes again, and he closes them tightly, against the dry grittiness. Cold blasts his eyelids.

Shizuka's voice registers.

"I found it," she says.

"You—traced it?" Ryou says, dragging himself upright. Hair falls over his eyes and he pushes it away—and brushes Shizuka's hand. He blinks. "The tile?"

Shizuka draws her hand back. Her cheeks are pink.

"Yeah," she says, soft. "Want to go now?"

He bites down but can't control the chattering of his teeth. "Yes—" half-staggering, half-crawling to his coat and pulling it on in several small, jerky movements "—yes, but—Otogi?"

"Went home this morning. Don't worry, he won't come prying. He has work to do, too."

"And—" casually, oh, _casually_ "—Mai?"

He doesn't dare look at Shizuka. But she says, peaceably, "Not back yet. But I know where to find her."

"Don't," Ryou says. "I mean. Not yet."

Shizuka nods. "I know."

She pours steaming water into a family-sized thermos, rearranges the gadgets on her work desk, packs a satchel, and finally putters around the edges of the pile of machines, making a vague attempt to organize them, while Ryou laces his boots.

"Have you eaten?" he asks, stalling for time. "Breakfast—er, lunch?"

Shizuka says, "No, but I know a good place by the docks."

She smiles at the dumbfounded look on his face, and slowly, beautifully, Ryou feels relief blooming in his chest. He smiles back. They're okay again, it seems.

05. It's mid afternoon—but where Baek would have burned him red and YG0 warmed him with mellow sunshine, Ukiyo covers Ryou with a cloak of gray gloom. The light is, if anything, murkier, as Shizuka leads the way down the docks. At least he is fed now, and the taste of curry in his mouth is a lingering, pleasant heat, a buffer against every cold breath.

Shizuka seems to be in high spirits. Business has never been better, as several of the grounded merchants in her section of dockside have decided to have their ships serviced—she may even have the money for a billboard in center-sphere, if this keeps up.

But then she glances back and scans the crowds, and the look in her eyes is wary, and Ryou knows she feels it too—perhaps more acutely than he does—the simmering discontent radiating through the docks.

Shizuka says, "It's kind of scary, isn't it."

"Yes," Ryou agrees.

"A lot of people on Ukiyo are unhappy," Shizuka says, quietly. "Normally, I mean. But now they're all unhappy about the same thing. And there's nothing to do—nothing to do but stand around—"

"While their goods rot," Ryou says.

"Yes—" Shizuka hesitates. "It's more than that, Ryou-kun—it's not all about the money."

"The quarantine has to be lifted soon," Ryou says, and as he says it his eyes sweep the docks, looking, looking, for a glimpse of red cloth and white hair.

"Fuck off, Coalheads!" someone yells—and the tension dissipates for a moment as people laugh and curse.

"There it is," Shizuka says, pointing. She sounds relieved.

The warehouse next door is busy; a man shouts through the noise of metal tearing through metal ("Power saw," Shizuka says; "salvage, probably—cutting up a hull"). But _their_ garage is silent.

Uneasiness bubbles up, cold and oily in Ryou's throat.

"Wait here," he says, stopping just in front of the rolled-up door.

"_You_ wait here," Shizuka says. "You don't know the lingo. You'll spook him."

Ryou bites the inside of his cheek as he reaches back—his palm brushes the cold metal edge of the spanner in his coat pocket. He curls his fingers around it.

"Together, then," he says. "And stay close."

The garage is small—much the size of Yuugi's garage on YG0. This must be, Ryou thinks, what Yuugi's garage looks like after closing—dim and dark, quiet and close.

He can see it, though: the hulking body of the Necrofear stretched out on the ground in front of him as a man bends over it to remove its mechanical heart. The reality, of course, is that the Necrofear will have vanished already, its eyes plucked, the sum separated into its parts and every last part harvested and sold.

But there will be a trail to follow, now.

"Hello—hello—hello—?" Shizuka's voice echoes into the darkness. "'Scuse us—hey, can you turn on the lights? Hello?"

To Ryou, she mutters, "I know working in the dark cuts costs big-time, but this is ridiculous—" _click_ "—there, that's better."

The flashlight cuts a dusty blue line through the garage. Shizuka flicks the light skillfully over storage bins, a pile of robotic limbs, and the wires and cords that hang low and tangled like the tendrils of a strange plant.

"Maybe he's out to lunch," she says, darting ahead. "Let's find the light switches—we can have a poke around before he gets back!"

"Wait," he says, but his throat's seized up and no sound comes out. He tries again. "Wait, Shizuka—"

She's only a few feet ahead, pointing the flashlight at a switchboard. "That's weird," she says. She swings the flashlight down and around and presses the buttons one after another.

He can feel her eyes on his face, even though he can't see them, and imagines they must be wide with curiosity.

"Weird," she says again. "A power cut—? Where's his backup generator?" She snorts. "What's with this guy—"

The spanner is slippery in Ryou's fist.

"No," he says.

Shizuka hums, inquisitive. "No what?"

_"On these docks there are never any accidents. Be careful, eh, sweetheart?"_

"No," Ryou says. "It's not a power cut."

_My god what have I done_, he thinks, and _Get out get out get out_—

Shizuka makes a noise then—a triumphant cry that chokes off into a moan, and the beam of light trembles in the air.

"Don't look," Ryou says. "Don't look. Get behind me—"

She ignores him; the light shifts as she squats down.

"Oh," she says softly. "Oh—" And softer still: "_Kami-sama_."

Ryou closes his eyes, but when he opens them the shape is still there: a shadow spread-eagled on the concrete and a darker stain splashed around it—the body.

_The body—_

He squeezes the spanner, once, pressing cold grooves into his palm, before slipping it back into his coat pocket.

"Shizuka," he says—he tries to say it sharply and fails. "Are you—?"

"I have to—have to—sorry—" Shizuka murmurs, and she drops the flashlight and pushes past him. He lets her go. The garage is empty; he knows that now, save for his presence and that of the howling dead.

He retrieves the flashlight and angles it down.

Strange that a small cut would produce so much blood. Arterial spray down the front of the dead man's body—

_So he has another knife—_

The dead man's shirt has been cut away. There are burns on his chest—small, round cigarette burns and several larger patches of blisters and skin burned away from flesh. Bruises interlace under the blood. The skin looks raw and pulpy.

Ryou shines the light on the dead man's hands and sees further signs of torture—

_God—_

Death came swiftly, at the end—_he came from behind, pressed the head down and cut_—but by then the dead man would have been begging for it, screaming even—

And unheard over the sound of salvage next door. How long? Ryou wonders. How long had Bakura kept him alive while he flayed skin and flesh from bone?

He might have been there, Ryou thinks—been there all that time, been there while Shizuka walked by and bent her head to the door and listened, and Ryou slept—cutting a man to pieces and reveling in his cries—

The scar on his chest burns and burns and burns.

06. Shizuka has probably gone, Ryou thinks, and he can't blame her for it—but as he emerges from the garage, blinking and dazed, he sees her—sitting just outside with her knees pulled tight to her chest, staring out over the docks.

"Shizuka," he says.

She stands up slowly. Her eyes are wide and glassy.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I—panicked. I've never—I mean—not like _that_." As she speaks she presses her fingers against her throat. "But you've seen worse, I'll bet."

"I'm sorry," Ryou says. "I should have come alone. I shouldn't have brought you."

She doesn't quite laugh. "_I_ brought _you_, remember?"

"I put you in danger."

"Yes," Shizuka says. "I was in so much danger. He could have jumped up and attacked me at any moment—he—oh, god—" She takes a deep breath. "So—our salvage man's dead. Back to square one."

"No," Ryou says. She doesn't seem to understand. He tries again. "_No_. You're out—you're stopping. You've taken too many risks already—if _he_ finds out you've been trying to track him—"

Shizuka flares up. "I didn't go around waving that heat tile in the middle of the docks, shouting questions about a mysterious suit to every person I met—I'm not stupid! And they're good people—_good people_—none of them would sell me out to any off-planeter who came around asking!"

"They would betray you in an instant," Ryou says, loud. "People can be made to talk. You saw what happened to the scavenger. He can do worse—he can do much worse—"

He's angry, Ryou realizes—it's a hot and uncomfortable feeling. But beneath it is something fierce and glowing, an assertion: _I will protect you_.

"Yes," Shizuka says, subsiding. "Yes, I saw. Cruel—_cruel_." And then, maddeningly, she says, "That's why I want to help you."

"_Please_," Ryou says, _please, he'll _burn_ you_, but she shakes her head.

"No more secrets between us, Ryou-kun."

"You need to be careful."

"That man was one of my kind," she says. "He didn't deserve a death like that. I'm in. I'll help you."

Ryou breathes in. "No more secrets."

07. Shizuka helps him comb through the garage; they turn it inside out, examine every speck of dust, every bit of ash and garbage, but there is no trace left of the Necrofear. They leave the dead man lying where he fell and return to center-sphere.

Shizuka wants to tell the people in the warehouse next door—

"So there can be a cremation—_something_—they must have been on friendly terms, you can't set up shop here without getting to know your neighbors—"

Ryou says, "The fewer people who know, the better—the safer they will be." Mercifully, she seems to agree. He adds, "I'll take care of it tonight."

Shizuka glances at him, startled. "You mean—you're going back to that place?"

Her surprise surprises him. "I have to," he says. "In case—"

"In case _he_ comes back," she finishes.

"Yes."

This is Bakura's MO, Ryou knows. Death—then fire.

Ryou looks back to his files, spread out on the floor in front of him. A request to HQ for further information about Karita's squadron some months ago returned with a list of names, many of which tally with a list of Ryou's own keeping, of those recently dead at Bakura's hands. A mineral baron named Kalim, found dead in one of his mine shafts after an explosion. Commander Akh Nadin, whose private security firm Bakura must have infiltrated, before he cut his throat and set his offices ablaze; Alex Blackheart, "Heishin" to his friends and "HE WAS BURNED ALIVE!" to writers of sensational news articles; a stunt pilot turned smuggler, alias Kisara, whose suit became a fireball. There are other names, of course, on this list of dead—names of people who never came near Karita's squadron: Baek's murdered priest Shimon, whose burning Ryou interrupted, and Maximilian Pegasus, who died in his bed—died of fear, it seems, before his kingdom burned to the ground around him.

The scavenger's work-name was Two-Step, Shizuka told him. Real name Johnny. That's all she knows, all she could find out. She wishes she knew more.

No, Ryou says, thank you. You've done more than enough.

Ryou remembers the only Johnny he knew, the fear in his eyes, in that locker room so many years ago—his gun hot in his hand and Jounouchi's whoop in his ears. This Johnny—dead Johnny, Johnny Two-Step—was not in Karita's squadron. He was not a crook. He is not in any of Ryou's files, or Ryou's records. He is not, Ryou thinks, supposed to be dead.

He writes Johnny's name on the second list. Writes _ex-military_ with a question mark beside it. Writes _contact HQ ASAP_.

He imagines writing, _This is all wrong_.

He'll need a gun. He'll take Mai's if he has to—no matter what she tries to do to him. Even if she shoots him. He's coming back tonight, and—

_Doing what, exactly?_

Shooting to kill. Shoot a hole in his chest. Shoot a big bloody circle. Matching set—

_No_—

A rustling startles him; he looks up to see that Shizuka is moving toward the door jamming a hat over her ears as she goes.

"Dinner," she explains, catching his stare.

"I'm not—are you—?"

"I know," she says, ruefully. "I'm not hungry either. But I always bring dinner home on my days off."

"Right," Ryou says. "Okay. Be careful."

"I'll be _fine_," she says, smiling. "See you. Oh—Kujaku-san may be back soon. Good luck." A blast of cold; then the click of the door.

The memory of the scavenger's pulverized body settles on him, heavy.

_He didn't deserve a death like that—_

It was murder—cold-blooded, coldly calculating—_what was he thinking?_ They had all been murder, all those deaths—premeditated—diabolical—blood on Bakura's hands.

_And on mine_—  
_I should have killed him on Baek!_

Ryou sighs, closes his eyes, passes a hand over his face.

08. In the side room, where Mai's dresses hang, in the box labeled _Garlic_, Ryou finds three guns and a KaibaCorp nightstick. He tucks the stick into his boot, against his leg, and puts one gun in the right inside pocket of his coat, for a cross-body draw. His outer pockets are heavy, weighed down with Shizuka's flashlight and the borrowed spanner.

Shizuka looks up as he comes into the main room. She's tinkering with something, a tiny green chip, and her dinner sits cold and untouched beside her.

"You're going?" she says.

Ryou swallows. "Yeah." He meant to wait for Mai, to say something—_last words_, his mind supplies unhelpfully—but he can't wait any longer.

She looks into his eyes. "Be careful," she says, and Ryou smiles for her—

"I'll be fine," he says. But his hands tremble as he closes the door.

* * *

Johnny Two-Step is poor company this night. Ryou has taken cover beside the dead man's desk, behind crates and pieces of unknown machinery. He paces to keep himself warm and stop his teeth from chattering. The rubber soles of his boots are noiseless on the concrete. He keeps his eyes on the door, unseeing—in the darkness, images form and dissipate and swim before his eyes until he's sure he must be dreaming:

Shizuka, her small body curled in on itself, watching the door, biting her lip, waiting for—not his return, but Mai's—

Bakura, walking down the street toward him—cloaked in red, brilliant in the half-dark. He blends into the night crowd. He walks slowly. He looks ahead. No one pays him any mind—but to Ryou's eyes he shines like a beacon—until he blinks, and the light extinguishes itself, and Bakura fades—

Darkness; the dim outlines of the garage door. Then Jeong Joon Ho's eyes, filled with pain, his open, gasping mouth—

Mai looking down at him, contemptuous—

Johnny Two-Step dead on the ground, his chest bubbling with burns.

Crouching by the desk, he waits—and waits, his arms and legs growing stiff and his breath shivering out of him into the cold air. He waits until morning, until the twilight beyond the garage is shot through with a paler gray, and the sound of quiet footsteps and murmured conversations beyond the door give way to the general hubbub of the docks at dawn.

* * *

Shizuka throws her arms around him when she opens the door, rests her head on his shoulder and stands there holding him, accepts his weight as he leans against her.

"He wasn't there," Ryou says dully. "He didn't come."

"Thank goodness," she says, muffled. "Thank God."

"I was wrong about him," Ryou says, into her hair. He says, "I can't stop him. I have to—_kill_ him, Shizuka—"

"Kujaku-san is back. She came back last night. She's still asleep."

He wonders at the softness of her smile. Then he goes into the next room and lies down beside Mai, and goes to sleep.

09. Three days later, Bakura finds him.

Ryou is sitting on the concrete slab overlooking the docks, eyes roaming over the sea of ships and their rotting cargo, when something red flaps in the corner of his vision, and he turns sharply and sees—

_Bakura_.

Standing at the very edge of the docks, his white face turned toward the Coalition Wormdrakes—unthinkably small against a backdrop of hulking ships—and far out of range, but Ryou can remedy that.

He leaps into action, slipping between the people milling about, approaching as quickly and unobtrusively as he can—half a street between them now—still beyond range—_of a knife_, anyway—maybe not a _gun_. He keeps his eyes fixed on that shock of white hair. Unbelievable—the madness of it—the whole of a coalition flotilla with its eyes trained on the center-sphere looking for Bakura—and there he is, a wanted man, moving in the crowds undisguised.

_I'm going mad_, Ryou thinks. _I'm going batshit fucking crazy._

_No—_

_He's here. He's here. He—_

_—sees me._

Bakura smiles—huge and bright and totally deranged.

And then he _runs_.

Of all things, Ryou was not expecting this. Eternal pursuit through the stars—cat and mouse across planets—a slow death in the cold and dark—coughing out his last breath in the sand at Bakura's feet—laughter in his ears, blood on his lips, fire in his lungs—

—but not a chase. Not a chase _on foot_. The pale and fleshy grub without his armor, vulnerable and painfully slow—

Bakura is a single flame in the gloom.

"No!" Ryou says—a gasp—"No, _damn it_—"

It's been months since he's run any considerable distance. He's out of condition—he's _lopsided_—

He moves awkwardly, swerving; he stumbles, crashes into pedestrians, rebounds, shoves at them, is shoved back, shouts: "_MOVE_—"

And what will you do? he asks himself. What will you do when you catch him—shoot him in broad daylight? Bludgeon him into submission with your one good fist?

_Sheer brilliance, Inoue—_

He can't hear his breathing over the humming of the sphere and the air screaming past his ears, but he can feel it, ragged, faltering, as the tight, horrible cold stings his eyes and works its way down his throat, burning through his chest in waves—

Fire in his lungs after all.

"Hey, what's the rush!" someone shouts after him.

"Watch it, _liumang_!"

_Run_, he thinks; _run, run, it's never been more important—run—run—_

Gradually, incredibly, his body obeys him—his arms pump—his breath steadies. The pain in his side dies away. He's gaining—_he's gaining_—

He's running—he's _sprinting_—he's never been faster!

Bakura turns down a side-street. Ryou skids around the same corner.

_I've got you now!_

His heart stutters, skips, resumes—

It's a dead end. And Bakura is waiting in the shadows, at the back of the trap.

_God another alleyway_—_oh god, oh _fuck_—don't panic—_don't panic—_get out get out get out—_

The gun shakes in his hand. "Bakura," he says. His voice is almost gone. "_Enough_, Bakura—"

Bakura looks at him—grins—"_No._"

"You're trapped—"

_No_, he thinks, even though the gun gleams between them—I'm _trapped—the trap has closed—_

"Some civilian you are," Bakura says, staring down the barrel. He says, conversational, "I came because I wanted to ask you a question."

It's as if the gun isn't even there, Ryou thinks incredulously—they may as well be two friends talking in the street.

He tightens his grip, lets his index finger edge toward the safety. "Enough," he says again, louder. "Enough of this madness. I've come to put you down, Bakura."

"Not the way you disposed of my mechanic, I hope," Bakura says. "Tell me, was that necessary? He was a good man."

"_What?_"

Bakura _moves_, blurring before his eyes. Ryou lands one hit with the butt of the gun before he crashes into the alley wall, the breath blown out of him before he can cry out, his teeth rattling in his skull as he slides down—but Bakura catches him—

"You can't kill me," Bakura says.

"Bakura—" he can't breathe—he can't _breathe_ "—mechanic—_no_—"

"No one," Bakura says, "can kill me." His hands are on Ryou's throat—tight enough to hold him, but not strangling—not yet. Ryou gasps and lies still and listens. "No one can kill me," Bakura murmurs, slowly, steadily, and there is a strange flatness to his voice, as though he is chanting a rhyme learned in childhood, a dark litany: "I will come back—I will come back, again and again—I will be deathless, I will be eternal—until they are _dead_—"

Squeezing tight—

_Fuck—_

He brings the gun up, _hard_, utterly and agonizingly aware of the futility of it—

It whistles through empty air—then goes flying as Bakura hits Ryou's hand.

"I will drag them into a world of shadow and nightmare—"

Bakura's voice fills his ears, rhythmic. His sense of unreality grows as the alleyway spins around him. _This isn't happening—this—I'm dreaming—I've lost my mind—I'm asleep—he'll kill me this time, I know it—_

"—I will burn their treasure houses and their empires—"

"_Listen to me, Bakura_—_ghk_—"

Crushing pressure on his windpipe—

Bakura's eyes settle on his face and the mouth stretches wide in another smile—a confiding smile, but one edged with madness—and bleeding—_I did that_, Ryou thinks, dazed.

Blackness presses down on him. Not a dream, then, but no nightmare either—the world turns and shifts and reforms in perfect clarity: a fight for his life.

He brings his knee up, follows with a fist—and in the next moment his head is splitting, _pain_ shooting down through the skull and neck, the blackness overwhelming—the concrete is a cold relief against his face—_ah,_ he thinks_, I know this scenario_, and waits for the boot to grind against his cheek—

The boot drives into his ribs instead—once, twice. Sharp, bitter pain—he chokes into the ground and strikes out blindly—air—

Through the haze he hears Bakura speaking.

"That was for my Necrofear."

When the blackness recedes, Bakura is gone.

10. The next hour is—difficult.

He sits up first—a small victory—and slumps forward, cradling his ribs, taking shallow breaths. The coat cushioned the blows—the bones are bruised, he suspects, but thankfully not broken. His nose is bleeding. He lets it bleed.

He crawls to the mouth of the alleyway and tries to stand; it doesn't happen. So he sits there, at the edge of the street, and lets bitter anger wash through him—at Brigadier Ishtal, at himself. He's lucky to be alive—he knows that. But he doesn't feel it.

A shadow falls over him; he looks up through swollen eyes.

"Bleedin' hell, Whitey," Alister says. "What happened to you?"

* * *

tbc, eventually (thanks for reading!)


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